A 10-part,
semi-humorous
poem of mine,
called
No One's at the Cash Register
is currently in the new issue
of
The poem can be found
It is from a new manuscript
called:
Absence: Presence
The poems in the manuscript
were influenced by
Classical Chinese Poetry
(mostly of the T'ang Period):
 |
| Cold Mountain |
Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, Chia Tao, Cold Mountain (Han Shan),
Po Chu-I, Tu Mu, Meng Hao-Jan…
 |
| Han Shan (right) and friend Shih-Te |
This particular poem was written
in imitation of the poetry of
Han Shan was a hermit reported to have lived in the
mountains near the Kuo-ch'ing Temple in Southeast China. He sometimes worked in the temple
kitchen and wrote his poems on rocks, trees and the walls of farmer's homes.
Ever irreverent (in the true Ch'an or Zen spirit), he constantly poked fun at
institutional spirituality and traditional cultural conventions. He took his
poet-name from the place where he lived (Han Shan translates as Cold Mountain).
His poems were eventually collected after his disappearance
(he is reportedly to have gone into a cave at Cold Cliff, after being hassled too
many times by Temple officials, and pulled it shut behind him, disappearing
forever).
Han Shan's collection is known as The Cold Mountain Poems or
Poems from Cold Mountain. There
are many translations into English that I like (most notably the famous ones by
Gary Snyder - found in
his book Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems), but my favorite are the playful, exuberant ones by J.P. Seaton, published by Shambhala Publications. They have a goofy, trickster quality that I love.
Here's one:
XI
People ask about the Cold Mountain way:
plain roads don't get through to Cold Mountain.
Middle of summer, and the ice still hasn't melted.
Sunrise, and the mist would blind a hidden dragon.
So, how could a man like me get here?
My heart is not the same as yours, dear sir…
If your heart were like mine,
You'd be here already.
****
Cold Mountain is a state of mind, or,
more deeply,
a way of being in the world.
For my own poem, I imagined someone like Han Shan
standing at a cash register in a grocery store
(an
alternative food store, probably)
day after day, year after year.
I have a series of poems in the new manuscript that are
written
in the persona of "No One."
Someone a bit like Han Shan...
 |
| Han Shan and Shih-Te |
Here's a Seaton translation
of another Cold Mountain poem:
III
If you're looking for a peaceful place,
Cold Mountain's always a refuge.
A little breeze, breath of the shaded pines,
And if you listen close, the music's even better.
Under the pines a graying man,
soft, soothingly, reading aloud from Lao Tzu.
****
Well,
my poem takes place in the service industry,
a world of humiliation and pitiful wages
(40% of workers in the US are in the service industry)
and so my poem begins like this:
No One's at the Cash Register
1.
If you're looking for a
peaceful place, this is not it.
I work this register night
after night. "Clean up on
aisle six." Olive oil and glass
and some blood. Red drops.
Chrysanthemum petals. A
woman holds her finger
in a wad of paper towels.
"Did you find everything okay?"
Words here mean nothing. No
use for words on Cold Mountain.
So, why come down? The moon
asked me to pick up some
bananas for her. And cash. I
needed the cash.
2.
Middle of the summer
and the frozen vegetables
are still frozen; ice cream,
too. Tourists want a cold
drink, someone to humiliate…
You can read the rest at
Other Notable Translations:
Red Pine's Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
and Burton Watson's Cold Mountain
