Iron Mountain. Mark Frutkin

one moves.

      Night comes.

3. The Emperor’s Poem

      The iron mountain towers above us

      robed in mist, its crags

      reach through the clouds into heaven,

      a single white waterfall seems

      to thread down from the sky

      in steps and fragments

      and, like the trail behind us,

      disappears the way we have come.

      I see my lieutenant ahead

      alone on his horse.

      He reminds me of myself.

      Though I am the greatest Emperor

      the world has ever known,

      the mountain towering above

      was here before I came,

      will remain when I have gone.

      The first heavy rain will obliterate

      our footprints and any sign of our passing.

      In ten springs, a hundred, a thousand,

      this path will remain the signature

      of a traveller unknown, and the mist

      will continue to swirl and dissipate

      like poems breathed on air.

4. Chaos

      Like the mountains that sweep before us,

      fragmented and overlapping,

      our world is in chaos.

      My failure to bring order to my world

      stings me and causes me distress.

      I am the Emperor,

      yet the world is an avalanche of sorrows

      and I can do nothing.

      Long ago I gave up searching

      yet I ride on.

      I take my ease in a poor man’s hut.

      How is it my heart is soothed

      by the sight of two wooden buckets

      resting side by side in the doorway?

5. The Emperor Comes to the River

      I have come through a storm

      of mountains to find d9eGuan Yin,^* high peaks and low valleys, my heart torn and contorted as the concatenation of cliffs, the constant rupture of planes.

      All the streams have dissolved in the river,

      twisted down from the mountains

      and dissolved in the river.

      The water flows without obstruction

      like thoughts with no one attached to them.

      ^*Goddess of Compassion

Mountains, clouds

Meditation on a Mountain

      It begins and ends with a mountain.

      A waterfall chatters down its face

      turns to a whispering brook

      widens, flattens into a slow river

      resolves into a calm lake

      where the mountain melts

      in its pure reflection.

Mountain and cloud

      Mountains so high

      it is impossible to distinguish

      what is mountain, what is cloud.

      In the pavilion

      at the mountain’s foot,

      a lute

      wrapped in brocade

      woven to the sound

      of the lute’s music,

      depicting a scene

      of mountains and cloud,

      and a lute in a pavilion,

      wrapped in brocade.

Wang Meng’s painting “Reading in Spring Mountains”

      A circular stamp above the mountains,

      the Chinese character for moonlight.

      Cursive tree branches tell stories

      of prevailing winds, dry summers, long deep winters.

      The creases of the mountains

      cut tales deep into the memory of the earth.

      Clouds brush themselves into wavering ideograms,

      and dissolve like secret writing hidden in the skies.

A poem Written on “Hall of Clear Mind” Paper

      Paper is the most humble of the Four Treasures: paper, brush, ink, inkstone.

      Slight breeze across the page.

      Not much to say.

      No mountain. No storm.

      Cherish the earth.

      Cherish the paper,

      the trees this is written in

      as wind, invisible ink,

      weaves among branches.

      Nothing much happens.

      Only the effect is visible.

The Emperor Floats

      for Richard Gravel

      The Emperor sits on his throne

      at the centre of his palace.

      Retinues of servants and messengers

      come and go with unrelieved persistence,

      but he is alone, always alone.