There is a moment before the sound the Great Om, Before Siva turned on one foot Before Krishna was blue and Tara green, Before the making of Lucifer, the heavenly war The gravity of heaven and the drifting fire of hell Before the holy breath blew into Man Before Adam’s dream of Eve Before Cain […]
Category: Japan
Solitude
What begins from the first day? The world goes slowly white, Not black and white: black Is all colors, but white is empty. Even the greatest go, they Cannot change or come back– In Japan they do not wear black When someone dies, but white. The greatest stand alone to sing The time, a poem, […]
The Wave & The Wind
Rikuzentakata Ôfunato Kuji swept away No trace they were ever there Otsuchi Miyako Yamada Sôma Namie Minamisôma Onagawa Kesennuma Natori Ishinomaki gone, The earth gave and the sea Has taken away Banda Ache Two hundred thirty thousand Gone in the Indian Ocean wave. I am thinking of Phuket on Boxing Day The waters receding so […]
How Mind Moves
The splash of water on rocks at the high end vibrations move, ripple the surface but not the sweet calm a center of lotus and lily pads like a quiet deep of sea — But water arrives by many ways to be a pond: fed by mountain-top rain seeping to a circle of stone where […]
女の子が折り紙を作る
A Girl Makes Origami I sit before the blank page Of the soul Waiting to fill it each day I fold minutes into hours And poems I fold dreams into cranes I dare say And let them fly away…
The Ears of Seongjin Castle
In the last light of March, under cherry trees as large as the oak Near the tomb of those lost in the battle of Seongjin Castle, yet another tale of the cruelty and kindness of men… The Japanese hacked off the noses and ears of the dead took them home, proof a battle won, souvenirs […]
A Kind of Drinking Song
The celebrants of Friday scotch, men of lesser deeds Spent time like pocket change in endless café-bars Made noise enough to wake the quick and dead: There was light drizzle on a cherry blossom way, The six of us, smashed, but more high on ourselves As most young men will be when booze is abused, […]
Kyoto
Kyoto It always brings sadness To the elderly Sitting on the ground Under cherry trees Bento and sakura mochi Along the Kamogawa Drag an old heart down in the beauty Of pink flowers: Spring Lovely yet so hard Another year to suffer Lifting sake to the gods! Rayn Roberts I lived six years in Japan, […]
A Bodhisattva Speaks of Why The Buddhas Smile
I have been asleep ten thousand years Here, where I live I have been dreaming this side of a river Where smiles are lost The shore of a dream where now In stillness deep Chanting the beat of dragonfly wings Feeling the ache In a mariposa lily opening slowly Know the vibration In sunflower and […]
First Published by Earth First & Warrior Poets 1998
Warrior Poets Secrets From the Mountains Above Nagoya Sitting in the mist between two boulders I cannot see the way in this bamboo wood, but the birds sing and there is the chirp and bellow of frogs– In layers of fern and limb a sudden stillness, the mist has cleared– a deer emerges, walks […]
