A Poem about a Bird

Egret

Songs rise
from the white sky,
as the water ripples.
The sky turns to water
in their song.

Songs rise
from the night sky,
as the dark mist
that hides a scene.
The sky is an emptiness
that cuts hope like a knife.

White feathers rise and fall,
like the light,
and could be all around
or hidden behind it.

The white sky
sets the teeming
of motion and friction aglow
like a candle.
Yet it is not alone:
its welcoming glow
leads elsewhere.
Forest fires light up
destruction, as the day is lighted,
as if to call us on
to war,
and drape the glittering banners of day
with the furore of death.
In the light
a white snake hides,
a golden snake hides,
a yellow snake hides,
and that which invites us
closes the door.

As the white day fades,
motions slow
across a village.
A nation
greyed by evening
completes a cycle,
as the white day fades —
and the nation is in stillness.
One may wonder if parts of it
have not faded away. How can they stay,
unless the nation itself is a stillness?
Night brings fear,
loneliness is like night,
the tiger's assault is like night
following the glimpse of brilliant day,
like nations of pursued hope
turned to decay.
People huddle together,
in concentrated masses,
with shiny, loud sounds,
as if to escape.

The night is like a cut
that deepens
the more we seek that which glitters
in its loud procession.

A nation has tides,
it laps and hides like the waves.
It must enter the water,
into sea,
into pool,
into ocean,
and it will be reflected.
Beneath this is a current,
that blows like a white wind
to hide the kindled day.
It is yet like the night,
hiding colours
in a shade of quieting white.

The lotus hides
the water.
The falling tree-flower hides
the sky.
They are as the night,
they are like motion standing still.
The lily hides
the garden.

Dark snakes may injure,
yet they are not seen,
except in the bright red that turns
the lily now to a rose.

Skylark, listen to the cries
of the geyser,
and dissolve in them.
Their sound is the sound
of fluttering chirps
played slowly.
Cry out, and dissolve in them,
sound hidden in sound.
For it is the same.

In water tinged like blood,
the piranha and stonefish lurk,
in water tinged black and white,
the shark haunts.
The lily disguises the stonefish,
just as a stone might.
The stone is like the lily,
the lily is like the stone.
The festivity above the sea
hides the shark. Disease is hidden
almost anywhere.
The stone is like the lily,
the lily is like the stone.

Water is still,
tinted white or black.

In stillness it waits.