The Voice of the Mountain

From where I sit on the high platform I can see the ferry lights crossing, criss-crossing the big river. I know the towns, the estuary mouth. There, beyond the last bank where the colour drains from heaven, I can outline the chapters of the world.

The other day a young man arrived from the village. Because he could not speak, he brought a gift of fish from the land of rivers. It seems such acts are repeated: We live in territories forever ancient and new, and as we speak in changing languages.

I, also, leave my spear leaning by the tree and try to make a sign. I am an old man sipping the breeze that is forever young. In my life I have lived many lives. My voice is sea waves and mountain peaks.

In the transfer of symbols, I am the chance syllable that orders the world, instructed with history and miracles. I am the desert and the rain, the wild bird that sits in the west, the past that recreates itself, and particles of life that clutch and cling.

For thousands of years, I know, I know these things, as rocks know, burning in the sun's embrace, about clouds, and sudden rain; as I know a cloud is a cloud is a cloud— a cloud is this uncertain pulse that sits over my heart.

In the end the universe yields nothing except a dream of permanence. Peace is a falsity. A moment of rest comes after long combat.

From the east the warrior returns with the blood of peonies. I am the child who died at the edge of the world, the distance between end and hope.

The star diagram that fell from the sky, the summer that makes men weep. I am the woman lost in translation who survives, with happiness to carry on. I am the breath that opens the mouth of the canyon, the sunlight on the tips of trees; there, where the narrow gorge hastens the wind, I am the place where memory escapes the myth of time, I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain.