Anywhere copies are made,
but copies aren't exact,
selection will take place.
Some erroneous copies will
be more beloved than others.
Some errors will propagate.
Some errors will die out.
Thus is language,
thus is chemistry,
and thus is life.
Raise chaos:
That's the job of intelligent life,
to make nice & orderly things
so they can crack and shatter
and eventually end up pulverized
to dust --
A fine, granular dust that will blow
across the universe.
First, the bowl must be made:
Some potter must shape and glaze
and fire it with care,
Turning sandwiches into art...
and waste heat --
entropy slow and fast.
All so someone can crack or chip it
(with ease and lack of intention,)
starting it on a path to being sand
grains a world away.
There is health in thy gray wing,
Health of nature's furnishing.
Say, thou modern-winged antique,
Was thy mistress ever sick?
In each heaving of thy wing
Thou dost health and leisure bring,
Thou dost waive disease and pain
And resume new life again.
foggy morning:
a figure approaches...
nope, just a shrub!
My mind's a map. A mad sea-captain drew
it
Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked
as jugs,
And states bright-patterned like Arabian
rugs.
"Here there be tygers." "Here we buried
Jim."
Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
About their buried idol, drowned so cold
He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
A country like the dark side of the moon,
A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
A land of hungry sorcerers.
Your mind?
--Your mind is water through an April
night,
A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its
white,
A lavender as fragrant as your words,
A room where Peace and Honor talk like
birds,
Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
Flutters and beats about those lovely
things.
You are the soul, enchanted with its
wings,
The single voice that raises up the dead
To shake the pride of angels.
I have said.
Buddha's lap,
a pigeon lands:
a monk shoos
the bird away,
but Buddha didn't mind.
Eight thousand miles
from my childhood home,
I'm pulled into a nostalgic
reverie
by the scent of straw
and cow shit.
This place,
on the other side of the world,
looks nothing like where I
grew up,
but that smell...
I
In my room, the world is beyond my
understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or
four
hills and a cloud.
II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
"The spring is like a belle undressing."
III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 