Seaspray
The sea ascends on stone,
the mist and spray upraised,
in driven change, in tide,
that ceaselessly with foam
will never still nor stay;
yet still the ocean wide
beneath eternal sky
is changeless in its way,
with waves that shall abide.
Red Mansions
Bright red silk-work,
like braided rope,
such is time,
which binds us.
In blessed red pavilions,
of finest wood,
the festivals continue;
like words on paper,
or painted on silk,
they are dream and fiction,
yet also true.
Do not undo
those quiet rites of joy!
They are braided
into the classics,
the patterns unbound by time,
the chrysanthemums undying,
for fictions never truly die,
so only by means of them
do we learn what is,
the unreal real in the real unreal.
We burn like grass,
or fade like dusk,
and we are but a dream.
Where then do we find truth,
save in such dreams?
Then treasure it,
like most precious jade.
Early Morning Waking
In some deep Polarian age, jellyfish all around me,
matter gushing forward, I lay dreaming,
drowsing in a tropical arctic, the warm circumpolar waters,
where sun and moon kiss in dreaming tidal pools.
I sensed, I felt, I did not understand;
lidless, I did not see, but the world's trumpets were sounding.
I walked on four soft limbs, and called,
and everywhere there were ripples. All was sea
until the sun fled. Then upward I launched in a flowering of air
as all the world went crashing; in sylphine splendor I flew,
playing with dragons. There was no winter there,
but in warm light I was swinging, vibration on the breeze,
a wisdom in the air, a bell sounding in the sea.
Then all became a misty fire and the moon fled;
no longer was I lunatic, and polar seas turned icy,
and mind turned to magic, and I was I, and I myself.
The whispers wandered in my head, and I seized myself,
and took myself from myself, dividing myself into two.
Then I knew both good and evil, and I wandered,
not longer bound by memory, seeing the world and myself.
The dreamworld fell away. The morning stars were singing,
and the alphabet was born, and the cycles numbered.
The whole world turned; the fire-lands sank beneath.
Then truths were written in stones, dancing stones,
that circled the points of power. Atlantis gleamed in the wave,
a city of towers gilded, a city of pontifexes,
where ships were flying like gulls. Spirit filled the wind
and rebelled; the island drowned in the ocean,
and I, a Neanderthal, escaped, looking up at the stars.