(Now He’s Reading an Ancient Classic: )
The Secret Of The Golden Flower
1
Birds on the feeder:
scatterings,
dull jewels
and musky fungus
tugging at soaking black-brown timbers,
thousands of worlds disturbed
*
The eye of the day sees
a magpie shoot past a hedgerow,
John’s old sheepdog bouncing, his chain
a formidable racket,
a rock,
by the swelling trunk of the very old apple tree
picked, unstoppably, out from the wall
and lifted up –
here’s 10 years, 40 years,
slowly up, and out,
the field’s own thoughts
unraveling
*
Characters come into being,
they talk in your mind.
Is this what the Golden Flower means when it says:
The gods are in the valley. People talk as though at a distance
of several hundred paces, each one clearly –
you hear them, but never yourself?
Is this why it’ s called the Presence of Gods in the Valley?
*
In this, the vale of the Grwynefechan, who can say?
The golden lens of the day
is smeared with cloud,
the sails of a hibernating butterfly cling to the hidden
stone stairwell with tattered papers and kindling;
shapes, formations, soil turned over,
over and over it’s turned.
There’s no way out: Australia on fire,
Europe under water.
This is the only thing.
Tugging at black wet timbers
by an old hidden wall,
the silver crescent shivers:
Nature / No Nature
2
Looking up last Spring along the lane, a sudden cow’s head, rusty, gigantic, high against blue,
devouring a hedge!
Pure sky all round this rich brown head,
then, startlingly, behind it, a circling buzzard, high, higher,
the orbs of the cow’s eyes rolling, staring down,
soft blue,
insane!
The heavens pull out an explanatory rock,
Free and Unrestricted Seeing walks out the woodshed and crosses the uncut grass by the very old pond.
‘Where are the poem’s edges’? I wrote, one time.
The world seeps into it at every point, through gaps in the woods,
the body through its valves –
the intricacies of music,
the Unborn!
3
‘One must not content oneself with small demands
but must rise to the thought that all living creatures have to be redeemed.’
What the hell’s he’s talking about? Frogs and newts and ivy,
the troublesome hazel, that urgent nuthatch,
us
*
The Ying-kuan-ching says:
‘The sun sinks into the great water and magic pictures of trees in rows arise. Highest good is like water; it is the ruler of the great polarity. The god who appears in the trigram of shock, Chen, is symbolized by wood, so the image of trees in rows appears.
A seven-fold row of trees means the light of the seven heart openings. The sun which sinks in the great water is the image for the Creative and the Abysmal. The Abysmal is the direction of midnight (mouse, tzu, north).
(Note: today is the winter solstice.)
The world is like ice, a glassy jewel-world. The brilliance gradually crystallizes. Hence a great terrace arises and upon it, in the course of time, a golden being appears. Who should it be?
*
Christmas 2019. Sunny!
ref: The Secret of the Golden Flower: a Chinese Book of Life. Translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm with a foreword and commentary by C.G.Jung
(eg. see pp 49-50)
“Ancient meanings, gleaming from the mosses on the wall!”
wrote Meng Haoran
