Seattle Participants Nancy Peacock |
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS THROUGH POETRY |
BECOMING OTHER THA TON, THAILAND I. The sound of a tree falling is a kind of groan, an aching, a fleet bleating outward to a last fall, and then the echoes emerge, vibrate down the valley and into the plains of the Kok River, mingle with the river words, the river rustle like the reverberations of any deed that is final, in some other time and place perhaps wrong, a sound few bother to notice. II. English is the richest of languages, the most mellifluous, but still my words stumble for the exact mimesis, and you, the reader, I feel you see through my efforts to sketch a world and its downfall, to go beyond my only tool. Do we run out of words for describing, and now repeat ourselves? There is a ribbon below, a river, and it is blue and winds away past view. Green crowds up on all sides to another blue. There are hills. The sound of logging trucks, saws, and roosters mingle with the pinging of bells here at the monastery. The ringing is the wind's voice as the others are not. Can humans learn to be receivers, to be like the bell taking in and letting go, an alteration that becomes and becomes more than itself: beautiful? Or does that stop your imagining, take you somewhere other than bell and wind and valley? No, more than nouns, emotions prismed in sound. Bells echo a long time, emanate, expand past the point where we attend, after identifying "bell." Our emotions alter, deepen long after we've named them or paid attention. They resonate, become. Or scar, or redeem us. Perhaps leaving traces some might know as beautiful -- if they noticed. To be more like a bell, less like a saw. Shaped perfectly for reception; waiting, not acting. Until. And then. Not to be one's self, that noun, anymore, but in receiving, new every time. Accepting, blending, and then the singing out. - Jill McGrath |
Seattle Participants Nancy Peacock |
SKY IN WATER Nadezhda's voice trembles during the test - it's the last time I teach her class; Nadezhda's voice like the fir trees I saw last weekend reflected in a pond, upside down, blurry, transformed. At the potluck party on the last day of class, Jeonglim and Saraswati talk about Indian scarves while Sashinee stands by the chicken she prepared making sure I will not forget the Thai sauce. Alla, Pavel, sing a sad folk song in Russian -- Romeo and Juliet at the kolkhoz, Alla, Pavel -- voices like waves growing apart, getting back together, Pavel starting couplets, Alla joining when she remembers more. Two months ago students sat in the class isolated and unattached like dark burnt stumps in a clear cut forest. The class today is like the pond where trees are linked by the water against the image of the sky. Sky in water - long feather-like clouds swimming in the blue water-sky, sun, shadows, sun, feelings rippling through me, and the firs around leaning on each other, lines shivering with wind, alive. -Christine Eisen |