Читать книгу Washita - Patrick Lane T. - Страница 10

BOKUSEKI

Iris blades cut through the last ice on the pond.

Emblems of endurance, they are what a man knows

who asks of the grey clouds they witness his passing.

I don’t know where the water goes, remember the thin creek

I drank from when I lived in that cabin by the sea.

The doe grazed among fallen apples in my yard.

When I shot her she hung for a moment in the sky.

There were days back then I lived without regard for life.

Forgiveness comes hard.

Each year I rake the leaves and burn

the winged seeds of maples in the flames.

I kneel by the pond and ask where I am going,

what it is I must do. Bokuseki, these iris blades in ice.

When the rain dries on my palms it leaves the trace of Gobi dust.

Each night I breathe a far desert, vestiges of the fall.