Health-giving sounds of wind and waves with a lovely view
of Lake Ontario and the nuclear plant in Oswego.
In the distance it looks like a steamboat that leaves behind
its smoke signals that imperceptibly merge into
the herd of clouds. I lie motionless, highly productive.
Excellent working conditions in deep shade; beneath
the spreading branches of a maple, I take remnants
of verses, fragments of pain and fossils of dreams,
and reconstruct the world of an eighth-century Chinese
poet. This is all that’s left of him. Nothing
more is known to us, just that he shunned people. Not where he was from
nor his real name. There are those who claim
that it’s all falsified. But the legend still lives, saying:
“Sometimes he crazily ran along monastery
paths, shouting and attacking all those around, sometimes
he looked into emptiness and laughed at himself.” I feel
I’m very close to him. And that from his time till now
nothing has changed. The world is just a bit older
and more irritable, stagnating too long, haughtily
turning on its axis as if it were the Center of the Universe.
But the truth is, from some other corner of the cosmos
even an all-out nuclear war would just seem
like some tiny, far-away star blowing up.
Like striking a match. Grief could make
one’s heart split like an atom, releasing energy
in an unstoppable chain reaction fusing words
into lines, lines into a poem, till the heart
detonates from the force, and the world disappears
with the cry of a wild goose.

Nothing has changed. Only that, unlike
earlier generations, we can’t expect
we’ll ever be read by our descendants. At the end of the path
from self-realization to self-destruction, it’s time
to devote ourselves to the archeology of the future. Behind
this steamboat of ours nothing is left but smoke,
short-lasting, just till it scatters in the breeze.
On the far side of Lake Ontario, over beyond
good and evil, just as if nothing were happening,
the sun sets. A beautiful view, just right
for a sugary panoramic photograph.

(Syracuse, 12. September 2024)

Translated by E. Wayles Browne

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