Читать книгу Washita - Patrick Lane T. - Страница 11
ОглавлениеBONSAI
Ts’ze, you love the sheep. I love the ceremony.
—The Analects of Confucius, Book III, Chapter XVII
The jay screams his morning song in the derelict pine
as I trim the stump of the old cherry tree.
Even with gloves my hands remember the cold,
remember breaking these wrists when I was a boy.
My arms mended wrong.
On the weathered board by the pond, five bonsai,
their leaves red as spilled blood.
Autumn maples grown from feathered seeds.
Bonsai.
How carefully I torment them every fall, cutting back their limbs and roots.
My chainsaw lies among the scattered rounds of the cherry tree.
Among my fingers, torn ribbons of wind.
In the pond the winter fish consume themselves slowly. Waiting.
So too the night.
Water has its way under the ice.
The jay laughs as he torments the day. And I say, Never mind.
