1054 A.D.
I.
Titanium skaters on lakes of metallic hydrogen
Etch constant curves of crystalline
Isotopes of orange uranium
All about the vacant house.
Enigmas of equations
Slide lattices to rest
In beds of powdered strontium,
Molding energy as form suggests.
In the place of flux we find new forms,
For flux-formed spaces enfold
Charms of magnet's fever
That conduct the core from pole to pole.
II.
The whiteness of Earth's silences
Are eyes that stare on space.
Orbits chart them ceaselessly,
Etching irises of lace.
The inner of Earth's outer
Is a torus twisted twice.
Balloons ascend within it
Painting shadows in the room.
III.
What can the mind of silence hear
Other than a whiteness past revision, past review?
It evolves from epicenters,
Stretches measureless as sound,
Or is seen as the floor of the void
Where the whine of protons stills....
In the drifts of chromium snow,
and gazes on the bones of matter bare.
At times, men in aluminum cloaks
Descend the neutron ladder,
And move in a sleet of particles
Too scintillating for instruments to record.
At times, men in groups descend
Through the smoke of the universe,
To tend the embers, imprison flame.
Their cascading movements sparkle.
We taste the afterimage of events.
Below us, pale and infinitely silent,
The plutonium leaves arabesque
Through radiant silences of solid helium.
IV.
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
-- Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 12, 2017 8:43 AM
Lakes of metallic hydrogen, drifts of chromium snow... Touched by spaceships created from enigmas of equations. We could have been there by now, standing on the shores of alien lakes. So sad...
Posted by: Captain Dave at September 8, 2013 8:57 AM1054, the year of the Great Schism.
Posted by: el baboso at March 12, 2017 9:04 AMPollocked words on canvas cast,
But instead of stainless steel or fields of flowers vast,
We read revelations of rust and dust.
Is it Zen or is it Tao, or is it the koan's cat's Meow.
Buddha Nature and Nirvana calling,
Will YOU feed the child who's crying?
Crab Nebula explosion/formation in Cancer - 1054 AD.
Only the Chinese eagerly recorded this singular astronomical event.
The West, stuck in its Dark Age morass, wouldn't acknowledge such an anomaly in God's Perfect Creation, tho' it was OBVIOUSLY there for all to see!
Glad THAT'S behind us, now.
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