Nanjing has been the unhappy site of two terrible massacres: the annihilation of the Taiping rebels in 1864; and the Japanese atrocity of 1937. In the gardens behind Qixia monastery there are grottoes containing ancient Buddha sculptures beheaded by the Taiping rebels who were intolerant monotheists, and again vandalised in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.
Qixia Temple, Nanjing, May 2008
In the time of the madness of power
the great river Yangtzi bore many headless
bodies with a stately curling motion
to no far shore but to a melting
of the flesh of the loved ones in ocean.
These ancient Buddhas each in a niche
cradling tributes of flowers and incense
are all beheaded like the Nanjing martyrs.
Their stone shoulders and still bellies endure
and their dwindling necks are eloquent as art is.
Lingering between Heaven and Earth Forever
At The Lingering Garden in Suzhou there is a plaque erected over the entrance reading, "Lingering between Heaven and Earth Forever."
By The Lingering Garden's lily-pond
grandparents are "lingering
between heaven and earth forever"
with children who're throwing crumbs
where golden fish are gathering.
They smile for they know forever
does not last long though it is
forever and the last of it
can last as long as anything.
Five Days Practice
Virtue and holiness are of the first day
and fade, as it is of the second day
to clatter on the stairs, be guilty, and to fail.
Clamouring lovers complain on the third
and justifications ring in the great silence.
The fourth is a day of clenching the thumbs
the brow, the teeth. The method, the method,
I hiss, till dawn smothers each weak star
for the fifth comes that wagtails should laugh
at the powerless moon, that cows should moo,
that air should taste of a dewy dawn
where the crow wets her belly in pasture
and we walk with whispering steps
to the threshold, bowing into bell ripples.
