Читать книгу Many Gods - Rice Cale Young - Страница 2

Where the fair golden idols

Sit in darkness and in silence

While the temple drum beats solemnly and slow;

Where the tall cryptomerias

Sway in worship round about

And the rain that is falling whispers low;

I can hear strange voices

Of the dead and forgotten,

On the dimly rising incense I can see

The lives I have lived,

And my lives unbegotten,

Namu Amida Butsu pity me!

I was born this karma

Of a mother in Chuzenji,

Where Nantai-zan looks down into the lake;

Where the white-thronged pilgrims

Climb to altars in the clouds

And behold the holy eastern dawn awake.

It was there I wandered

Till a priest of the Christians

With the crucifix he wore compelled my gaze.

In grief I had grown,

So upon its grief I pondered.

Namu Amida Butsu, keep my days!

It was wrong, he told me,

To pray Jiso for my children,

And Binzuru for healing of my ills.

And our gods so many

Were conceived, he said, in sin,

From Lord Shaka to the least upon the hills.

In despair I listened

For my heart beat hopeless,

Not a temple of my land had helped me live.

But alas that day

When I let my soul be christened!

Namu Amida Butsu, O forgive!

For the Christ they gave me

As the only Law and Lotus,

As the only way to Light that will not wane,

May perchance have power

For the people of the West,

But to me he seemed the servitor of pain.

For in pain he perished

As one born to passion:

In some other life no doubt his sin was great,

Tho they told me no,

Those who followed him and cherished.

Namu Amida Butsu, such is fate.

So again to idols

Of the Buddha who is boundless,

While the temple drum is beating thro the rain,

I have turned from treason

Into Meditation's truth,

From the strife the Western god regards as gain.

And if now I'm dying

As the voices tell me,

To the lives that I must live I'll meekly go;

Till my long grief ends

In Nirvana, and my sighing.

Namu Amida Butsu, be it so!