The One - Third Movement: Remembering - Song 17: Burning Ground — Segment III

 

THIRD MOVEMENT

REMEMBERING

 

SONG SEVENTEEN

BURNING GROUND

 

III

 

I keep moving retracing steps

I decide the City will be next

I intend to confront it – I will not wait

            to find that old terrain and know its sound

Back to the city – back to gray walls

journeying outward, inward – burning ground

 

I continue with courage heading there

and time being a relative thing

dances and laughs in shifts and shimmers

            as I open to hear the City’s old sound

First, a river flowing inside a littered border

that I hardly saw when I ran anxious 

to join the gray-skulled order

 

Now there is time and I will proceed

            and proceeding I will begin

and beginning I will know

the river’s voice that sings to me

            Yes, this is what I mean after all

            This is it.    Everything heard in the river’s call

                        

So after days of listening to turning wheels

I do arrive in the City and enter its stream at the eighth and northern gate

where the sweet star-jasmine still climbs the graying wall

 

As I step down from the breathing train

I hear clicks, rush of air, sand scratching stone

            as gray forms scuttle and scrape along

Yes, they are still here.  They have not changed

            I have

                        been one of them

            Now I am not

                        but because I was, I know them well

            I want to put my arms around them all

                        and tell them what waits outside the walls

            But I cannot unless they ask

                        and they will not do so

                        in their hurry to pass

                                    by this stranger lately arrived

                                    spewed unwashed from a train

                                    with too much brightness about the eyes

 

Now the rain begins, as before, and tears

wet my face and mingle with rain – just to re-member

            when I thought this place the journey’s end

 

I chuckle to myself thinking of how the journey begins

and begins and begins again just like these drops of spattering rain

            that track their pattern on any path

            simply because the drops are there to fall

Such musings make me laugh

 

I walk the long way down to the City’s second and southern gate

where I enter the stream of gray flowing into grayer towers 

            on hard-nailed feet that scrape and scuttle on stone and floors

A certain unexpected joy rises up – I am swallowed up – forgotten –

nobody – at last! and it does not matter in the slightest to me

            In fact, it makes me laugh out loud  --  and this 

-- just for a moment – stops the scuttling feet

before they forget and resume their hurried beat

            They cannot remember

            I cannot forget

                        An unlikely pair meeting on a nameless street

 

            I move out to the street standing beneath a gray tower wall

            I look down and see the grayest of forms, huddled smaller

            then I remember -- wrapped in rags

waving a broken white bowl from side to side

            I know this man and I know his face

                        especially the weeping holes where eyes should be

So I sink down close and join him there 

            and I hum a tune into the stale gray air

The bowl stops waving as he senses me far closer

then his comfort will allow

            “Get away from me!” he hisses.  “This place is mine!”

            But I just keep singing and tapping time

            with my boot against the stone

Now he shouts, “Get the hell away!  Leave me alone!”

As I feel his fear rise up, I do too

I walk away silent again toward another I must see

high above the seventh gate on a cliff – a wounded tree

 

 

I make my way to the seventh gate and climb the hill to the hollow tree

I step inside again and remember the names of stars

            above this nameless tree

            wrapped around the burning star that is me

This time there is no rain, nor any fear of being chased and found 

This time the wind is singing in the leaves and the sound of river water

            streaming up the wood from dark wet roots below

            is at peace with the blind, dead half of the wounded tree

I stand inside and, as before, touch two worlds at once

Life and death within a single trunk

            inside this tree

            I know the One inside of me

I return slowly down the hill.  I am glad to have seen the tree

Later, I board the northern coach on rails of falsetto steel

            I travel with the one who waits

I close my eyes and let the whiteness take me down           down

            down and deep

 

 

“Come nearer still,” 

            the whisper calls and I turn to see the dark and jagged

            wound that splits the huge trunk in two

            yet farther up green still clings and trembles

Looking down again I see the base is nearly severed

split by this night’s lightning bolt

            the last in a series of older assaults that have carved

            a hollow in living wood

Now my arms go round the wounded trunk and I say,

“I am here with you.”

“You are the One to do this for me,” says the Tree

“I perform the task when needed,” I say by way of asking

“The striking time is best known by you and me.”
            “To know that time is the only thing.”

“You are the One who will not betray,” says Tree

“A singular task brings unity!”

“Comfort and simplicity! Now then, finish me!”

Knowing that fear is a matter of time

I move my weight against the tree

            cracking the base and falling together through light

            down to deep path cut in the snow

            drawing everything to one-pointed light

            in a singular sound – ancient—piercing – low