I
How pleasant it is to walk in a garden
that is in darkness but for the moonlight -
how pleasant the roses, the muted bursts of colour
in suspension apparent, a suggestion of scent
in a smoke of dark green (diluted in evening,
they must be leaves), the pale shades
paler, shape and contour unrevealed
but to the perfecting eye of the mind.
And how pleasant to find a waterstream
and hear it, trickling, rustling languidly
on a grey that must be stones (round, smooth,
cold to touch), engulfed by silence,
turned into texture other sounds must pierce
to offend the peace of the night.
And this brown dog sprawled in sleep
on a perfect grass of perfect green
under the redeeming light of the moon.
II
and it's been ten years now I've been going blind,
and every morning the sea of pus by my pillow reminds
me of a world going milkier and hazier;
reminds me I'll know people, but not their faces,
of words in poems I'll no longer read,
and sounds whose sources ingressed into shadows,
to never again become visible.
III
And when I was young I saw my poems derided
for the ideal world they drew;
for the things I sang lived inside my mind,
and nowhere else, and were thus deemed untrue;
"The majestic birds you sing" - they said,-
are nowhere to be found;
why not sing the humble sparrow instead?
When you dare look around,
"you will find that the beauty of things -
let's take the instance of a butterfly -
resides not in the bright display of its wings,
but in that, inspected by the careful eye,
it turns out to be an ordinary insect,
no different from other insects,
but for a fanciful camouflage."
They revelled in the clarity of midday,
the imperfection in all things,
the innumerable accidents.
IV
The years have passed; their lithe, strenuous faces,
have, I believe, wrinkled, their hair turned gray;
some must have learned more; some now must be dead.
And I thank the Buddha for the grace bestowed,
that even under the clarity of a maddening sun
shining over a world of perennial darkness,
I've been allowed to see only a modest
world that is lit only by the moonlight.