WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DREAMS?

(1969)

The rich red grapes hang on the wall,

Too tall for me to get them.

I cannot fly so high up there,

Much wiser to forget them.

 

I’m sure, you know, those grapes are sour!

The power of hope is cheating.

The dream so gleaming fair above,

Proves sordid in the eating.

 

And we may dine well without wine,

And if our lives be plainer

For passing up the cup of lies,

Then we are all the saner.

 

But still the grapes hang on the wall,

Inviolate, in beauty.

And as we pass below their light,

Their presence blesses mutely.

 

MONSOON   (1965)

Rain on me, mercy of God,

And flood my deep and driest place.

Pour through my soul,

Thou torrents of grace.

 

Make me the gully

Of trash and leaf swept free

Fill me to overflow

Until I pour forth Thee.

 

 

 

EAST COAST

(1979. for Su’s birthday)

 

            How old is a coast of coconut trees?

            How old is a phosphorescent sea?

 

In some far twilight, when day is waning,

to your weary spirit a thought shall come:

that still on those beaches the waves are breaking,

the tide is flowing and the wind blows strong;

and the sky and the sea sing one song together,

which lasts as long as the world shall turn.

 

Let no grief come upon you when you remember!

Don't think of yourself as time's victim, of brightness as lost.

Somewhere, a you who is ageless stands, still wondering,

watching the seas on those murmuring coasts;

you are a part of that ongoing music for ever.

This will not die, while memory lasts.

 

Or even should memory fail, if the oceans dry up into mud,

Yet in eternity, that song endures.

Somewhere wind always blows on those beaches.

Somewhere it is night with a sea full of stars,

and the lines of fire fall blazing and crashing,

though no one stands on the darkening shores.

 

 

THE BURNING BUSH

 

O fire that burns and does not kill --

O pain that sears and still goes on --

speak to our lives.

Speak to the man drowned in flames

from the tumour in the bone

To the woman twenty years burning

in deadly marriage;

and the mother who drudges,

and the daughter serving unthanked,

and the father walking his office treadmill:

Hardly aware of the embers smouldering through their days

 

speak to us, bush that burns unconsumed,

each twig transfigured, filling the desert with light.

Say to the suffering, I am here:

in the burning and fire behold Me:

when no comfort is left -- (take off your shoes) --

when you bear what cannot be borne, in the limitless

I AM.

 

 

LISTEN LINDA

Listen, Linda,

 to the whisper of wind

Across the parched land.

Cool rains are falling again

And the blades of grass spring from blackened earth,

From the bitter sand.

 

Listen, Linda,

To the song that is sung

Beneath the dark sky.

Young hearts are dreaming again

And the bough that was burned puts out shoots of green

Where the ashes lie.

 

 

PARENT

 

Aged hands plucking my heartstrings

playing cadenzas of guilt across my soul

She who built the instrument

with innate artistry

renders her virtuoso performance

 

and I am paralyzed

and I want to run a thousand miles

I am held by the gripe of wrinkled claws

deep in my gut

 

Locked ...

 

No escape for player or played

but to deconstruct,

to disconnect

to spend a lifetime unbuilding

a lifetime's building

until

 

it is all loosened.

Strings unfastened.

Everything quiet.

There's only a frail old woman

fumblingly pressing keys on a dead keyboard.

 

In the unechoing chamber, a new note sounding

(a song I always wanted to practice)

my heart's own music,

a gentle lullaby

for my mother.