The Buddha Rat

Did the fairy midwives have a falling out
and somehow misplace her maidenhead?

The little father mouse squeaking about, doesn't care,
nor the mother honeybee buzzing along, fat with pollen.

Can anyone tell whether it's ovule or anther?
Can anyone say if it's stem or bud?

Well, fine. It's really okay. Since her whole life
she'll never have to hear "daughter-in-law!"

The nation is broken, but hills and rivers remain.
Spring is in the city, grasses and trees are thick.
Touched by the hard times, flowers shed tears.
Grieved by separations, birds are startled in their hearts.

The beacon fires burned for three consecutive months.
A letter from home would be worth ten thousand pieces
                    of gold.
As I scratch my white head, the hairs become fewer:
so scarce that I try in vain to fasten them with a pin.

I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed,
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.

He loved the brook's soft sound,
         The swallow swimming by
He loved the daisy-covered ground,
         The cloud-bedappled sky.
To him the dismal storm appeared
         The very voice of God;
And where the Evening rock was reared
         Stood Moses with his rod.
And everything his eyes surveyed,
         The insects i' the brake,
Were Creatures God almighty made,
         He loved them for his sake—
A silent man in life's affairs,
         A thinker from a boy,
A peasant in his daily cares,
         A poet in his joy.

The rat makes her way up
the mulberry tree, the branches
getting thin and risky up close
to the fruit, and she slows.
The berry she is after is so ripe,
there is almost no red. Prospero
thinks of Christopher Smart saying
purple is black blooming. She lifts
her mouth to the berry, stretching.
The throat is an elegant gray.
A thousand shades, Christopher wrote
among the crazy people. A thousand
colors from white to silver.

And now good night. Good night to this old house
Whose breathing fires are banked for their night's rest.
Good night to lighted windows in the west.
Good night to neighbors and to neighbor's cows

Whose morning milk will be beside my door.
Good night to one star shining in. Good night
To earth, poor earth with its uncertain light,
Our little wandering planet still at war.

Good night to one unstarved and gnawing mouse
Between the inner and the outer wall.
He has a paper nest in which to crawl.
Good night to men who have no bed, no house.

There was a man who left the city, went away into
                    the mountains,
built a cabin and lived in it. He said nothing and saw
                    no one, except
an occasional friend who came to visit, eat a meal of
                    stew, and leave.
After a while when friends arrived they would not see
                    the man.

but they always found a pot of stew cooking on the stove, and
since they were hungry, they ate, then waited for their friend.
When he did not return, they left saying how sorry they were
that they had missed him and vowed to return to see him
                    again.

Year after year the friends returned. Each time they found
                    the stew
but not the man, and always they filled their bowls and ate.
This happened two thousand years ago on a remote
                    mountainside
in China. Yet even today the man's cabin remains, not far
                    from here,

clean, well kept, the woodshed full of wood, a pot of stew
cooking on the stove. I was there just yesterday to fill
                    my bowl.

Little by little, the earth sheds
her veils. Lets her white blossoms
tremble. The river shakes out her blue

shimmy and scrubs it to smithereens
over the singing rocks, leaving her
sunny side up, such a tease
that I sway to her music

as if I am Salome's sister,
and not an old woman who knows
that the inkblot of sky on this page
of my daybook will soon begin fading,

because how can anyone, even Great
Grandaddy Death, stay asleep
amid so much awakening?