Substance and Reality, and: Wings, and: Playing by Himself, and: New Year, and: Lord! Once Again

Substance and reality

In this world everything gets covered by a thick crust of reasons and categories, in my mind, in other people’s minds, until the reality and substance of things can’t be seen any longer. Only fossilized concepts remain scattered around.

At my age, breaking through that crust, I re-examine everything, one thing after the other thing in imitation of my three-month-old granddaughter

And though I cannot yet see as clearly as that Buddhist monk who proclaimed “mountain is mountain, water is water,” nevertheless, constantly awed by the wonder and profundity of everything, I do not notice the passing of time.

Wings

When I first began to toddle the first thing I realized was that my legs and arms would not move as I wanted them to.

Now I am close to seventy and once again I accept the fact that my legs and arms will not move as I want them to.

Once, I would totter towards my mother’s outstretched hands. Now I live gasp by gasp, clinging to invisible outstretched hands.

I am not hoping for a jet plane or a spaceship

but for the bliss of growing simple wings, like those a caterpillar gets when it becomes a butterfly, and, joining with the angels, to fly and fly through the whole cosmos, as if it were my own flowering meadow, in ecstasy.

Playing by himself

On seeing me one day before leaving for primary school, the little girl next door said, “Granddad, they say you’re famous?” So I asked her, “What does famous mean?” She replied, “I don’t know!” So I told her, “It’s not something good!”

This year, in second grade, she read one of my poems in her textbook. She told me she had said to her classmates that she knew this poet well. “So, what did you tell them?” I asked. “I said you’re just an ordinary old man, but that you look like a little boy playing by himself!” she replied.

“Well done! Thank you!” I said, delighted, and felt like playing for the rest of the day.

New year

Whoever saw a year as new, a morning as new?

Ha! You yourself each day are fouling the source of mystery, and turning it into coal-black waste:

whoever saw a day tattered, an hour worn out?

If you are not made new, you cannot greet the new morning as new, you can never greet the new day as new.

Only if your heart’s innocence blooms anew, can you live the new year as new.

Lord! once again

I

Lord! Once again this midday my soul is wandering in search of your kingdom. I am like a kite soaring in the wind after the cord has snapped, twirling, vanishing into the blue.

Ii

Lord! Once again this evening my soul is like a puppy that gazes at the moon, barking and whimpering for you, and getting no reply.