the burden of ghosts

how much burden do the ghosts of everyday scars
         carry?    the faint smell of their nonpresence is

all it takes to weigh down their mourn     theirs
          is the past and the circle    theirs is the next

day and the next rounding off the circle      the scars
          of nonbeing go about their childlike ways

tracking noons fearing the thought of the coming
          dark and the next     & the weight of it all - 

---

In gorges, dragons voice age-old explanations.
In pools ten hundred feet deep, you hear them.

Cruel waves keep strict accounts, drinking
blood to nurture children and grandchildren,

but without ancient Kao Yao’s gentle justice,
feasting on prison-drowned spirits is empty.

Something there, mystery haunting darkness,
the futile talk of ghosts goes on and ever on,

gorges hearing cascades cry lament, gorges
mourning widowed gibbons. There’s nothing

human in the sound of gorges, gorges where
blades of churning water slice at themselves,

and now, sage hearts all hidden away here,
who marshals these bitter and drowned pleas?

- Meng Chiao, from Laments of the Gorges

The tidyness of verse

The tidyness of verse:
        grain that is smaller than earth's
        witnessing girth     home that is

Larger than the pronouns
         of wasted wish      sound that is
         vice, skin and rupture      this is

The tidyness of verse
       sharp as the smell of knowing
       the birth of grain, home & sound -

the loneliness of Meeraji

what seeks the would of war, the hallowed gorge1 &
           spill of light in want of
           light?2    the seethe that seeks

the feel of night      furiously free, joyously I3
          seek alone the crux of
          flight    who seeks the should of war?

---

(1)
Who can welcome laments of the gorges,
gorges saying What will come will come.
- Meng Chiao, from "Laments of the Gorges"

(2)
I hear it singing, / I sit up, awake. / It is a mountain rising, / lovely and immense.
I see myself / in the shine of it / and I want light.
I am full / with greed. Give to me
light.
– Linda Hogan

(3)
maiN hooN aazaad —- mujhe fikar naheeN hai koi
aik ghanghor sakooN, aik kaDi tanhaai
mera andoKhta hai –
– Meeraji