294.
Old pens old friends the given always
gets
hand it to me we say and hand it
surely is
weather of a distant city breath of
your mouth
transhuman rhapsody suck on your
finger now
o you everything you beast of a
million leaves
make me listen to your touch
also spoke sorrow after joy to mingle
red sky at evening leave your
grieving
all you lost is safe in Amitabha’s
glowing land
it is good to console better to
unmind the sorrow
who are you to lose to feel to grieve
answer me that you Trinity scholar
and rejoice.
295.
I’m translating back into my mother
tongue
what I heard in the high mountains
what I learned under the hill
earth gods and mind lords and me in
between
a haggard buffoon with a bottle of
ink
o sail me to your island ever after
pillow me with stillness till the
fever eases
then I’ll take hold of autumn skies
and bring them onward with a sheen of
rain
to cool the counsel of an angry world
gets hotter by the day as if all
scriptures
give us one mandate to conquer and to
kill.
