Golden Opposite of Grave Beauty
The Buddhist, Yuezun, saw light like gold
Above the blistering sands. The desert blight
Of Taklamakan gained no stranglehold
On shimmering beauty. There above cliff height
A thousand golden Buddhas sang and danced
With heavenly maids, celestial in strength
And rhythm. Yuezon had only chanced
Upon this vision of Enlightened length.
He carved his cave, a little niche above
The desert on the cliff face. There he set
To painting on the niche’s walls the dove-
Like maidens and the holy ones, there yet
Long centuries on, at least in rock deep rooms
Disciples dug, the opposite of tombs.
Diminuendo
The glossy sounds of maids and Buddhas rose
Above the shining fabrics carried on
The Silk Road far below—and placid pose
Of Buddhas everywhere in lotus dawn
Or under bodhi trees. The eras passed
And other monks enshrined their dreams in paint—
Cave, cave, and cave. The Silk Road then at last
Had disappeared, its memory only faint
Except in history. Everything knows doom.
The birth. The life. The death. The yellow maids
And Yuezun have gone. The caves no longer bloom
Renewed with mystic music escapades
Of Buddhas seen by Mogao monks, depths death
Doomed, too, according to Nirvana’s breath.
Music Beyond the Great Leap
The elements have now entombed the kings
And emperors who once were on the lips
Of all along the Silk Road. Damage wrings
Out galaxies, and Milky Ways eclipse.
Consider them our meditation halls
Where we can briefly ponder in the stars.
We think and paint whatever on our walls
And hope our strokes are something more than scars,
Or at the very least we hope they still
Glow, dark, when Great Leaps Forward pass and scrolls
Contained in one of them will later fill
Their emptinesses for some later souls—
And sounding of the instruments once played
By golden fingers will remained unstayed.
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