Nature cast in green, white and blue

Secret lagoon
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Continuing with part 4 of

POETRY LESSONS by Gu Cheng

4.
Because of my deep needs, I often travel the far edges of society.

There in front of me are plants, clouds and the sea—nature cast in green, white and blue. The purity of these colors wipes away the dust of the everyday world, letting my mind recover its senses.

Is this something I am learning for the first time? No, it seems to be a recollection of an earlier time, as if before I was born I was one of them. I once was curved like the tusk
of a mammoth, once as innocent as a leaf, once as minute and happy as floating plankton, that free . . . .

I want to thank nature for letting me discover myself, discover the story of all things of the world, living and not. I want to thank it for giving me an endless supply of poems and songs.

This is why in the midst of the battle with reality, in the midst of the howl of the grinding machines, I can still say in a sweet quiet voice:

I’m yours.
----- Gu Cheng

I'll give you the last part tomorrow. Then I'll write about Gu Cheng a little and about this poem. Good nIght!

Dark Clouds over the Sea of Dreams

IMG_8962 squ
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

This is the first part of a five-part poem by Gu Cheng, Chinese poet, as translated by Joseph R. Allen. It is on pp. 179-180 of Sea of Dreams. [See previous post.] (I cannot make each part indented in this blog--I have indicated the indent by a soft return.)
I'll try to give the other parts of the poem in subsequent posts.

POETRY LESSONS (1980)

1.
It was a raindrop that first introduced me to poetry.

On the way to my primary school there was a spire-like pine tree, but whenever I passed by it never spoke.

Then one day, after a rain shower, when the world was fresh and clean, that pine tree suddenly was all aglitter, with crystalline raindrops hanging from every needle; at that moment I completely lost touch with my own being. Inside each single drop I saw a raindrop floating; each drop was full of the clear blue sky; each drop held a new world for me . . . .

I knew then that a single small drop of rain was able to contain everything, and to distill everything within it. The world that sparkled within the raindrop was purer and more beautiful than the world within which we live our lives.

Thus, a poem is just that: a raindrop glittering on some tree of the imagination.

------Gu Cheng

It's just too much!

It's just too much!
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Well, I have to put up the last one! Right now, I am looking for the picture I want to use with a poem from Gu Cheng. Many years ago when the "Misty Poets" were touring with Carolyn Kizer, I heard him read at San Jose State with Shu Ting and Bei Dao, and another Misty Poet whose name I can't pull up right now.
Gu Cheng was wearing a hat which looked like it might have been made from one of the starched and cut off legs of a pair of jeans. The part over his forehead was fringed by pulling away the indigo threads and revealing the white ones. I didn't really pay too much attention to it until a young person in the audience asked if he could ger one like it.

The moment of his answer was emotionally striking far beyond what this bald recital of it sounds like. Gu Cheng told him that he had made his hat, that he would not make one for the student and that the student should make his own. This struck me with force, I still cannot really explain why.

I mulled this over, and have never forgotten it. Last year I wrote this haiku based on that brief exchange I heard on a evening so long ago.

insect eggs on a leaf—
Gu Cheng said: I made my hat
you must make your own

I just got the book Sea of Dreams; the selected writings of Gu Cheng in the mail today. The image on the front cover is of Gu Cheng IN HIS HAT! If I get the poem up tonight this will be some kind of posting record for me . . .