Reply to a Message from Magistrate Zhang - a translation

In these later years, I value silence;
worldly concerns no longer stir my heart.
I now move through the days with no plan
but to retire unencumbered to the woods of my youth,
where pine-scented breezes can play through my robe
whilst the moonlit mountain amplifies the music of my lute.
You ask if there are laws governing success or failure;
I say: Hear the song of the fly-fisher, rising up from the riverbank.

English rendering of this poem by Wang Wei (699–759)

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Now and Then

Now and then,
in the glare of some too bright light,
there is heaviness to the world,
or perhaps it is this flesh
that weighs so.

We do not own this moment,
or even our memories,
for all things change--
we are all changing,
and soon shall all be changed.

As the leaves blush with color,
falling like showers of tears,
they seem a dry and wrinkled
testament to all that was,
both green and young;

But what these eyes have seen
lies deep within this soul,
a music of memories
rising to the surface,

now and then.

Now and then,
backward, then fast forward;
Autumn leaves give way
to light Spring eves,
with buds on all the trees.

Now and then—
who can say when?
—wistful memories
of so many days gone by
will rightly sing this soul alight.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Turning

Leaves cascade to the ground,
a small music,
played by the wind;
it has begun,
this turning,
detaching
and falling
to freedoms
complicit with windy whims.

It is just the beginning
—we must be clear about that—
the start of a dialogue, a transition;
each leaf, as it turns,
glows, even as it fades
under the Autumn sun,
and, dying, dries,
and when it falls,
this is only a newer
hello,
the very latest one.

A slow dance,
this seasonal song,
is merely one of nature’s
many conversations;
the cold breath of Winter
may find an answer
in the winds of Spring,
or a balmy reply
on Summer’s sunny crest.

To turn,
to burn;
to prance
and dance,
unpinned
by the wind,
upended
(mayhap unintended)
and made free
to flee and be
and to become,
with all and some,
wholly changed material,
electrically ecstatic and
eclectically charged
for both the now and next.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Book of Hours

As if in manuscript,

our days and hours
drift, as they will,
like autumn leaves
falling from a tree.

Pages turn,
although some marginalia
tries to overcome errata
by means of a tenuous grip
on aging parchment,
so to further one conversation
over another.

Pages turn,
witnessing the passing
of time and place,
and people.

As the pages turn,
we remember
the counterpoint
of joy and woe
as a fuller music,
more strident,
even more poignant,
though now we sense it
as a gentler melody.

As the pages turn,
a time will come
when we are there no longer
to witness or feel the change,
and no witness left to us.

Pages turn;
for now, awareness and being
are grounded in being fully here,
of mind and spirit,
while we can be,
to greet the subtle music
of sun and moon,
even as the body
drifts away, towards
a different kind of voyage.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Drifting

Leaves drift, as they will,
in the breezes of the air,
in the breezes of the mind;
moments in time, they are,
pages turning in the book
of our times and lives,
turning softly,
margins ablaze
with the errata
of our thoughts,
body abuzz
of our doings.

Time drifts away from us,
through ever-present-now,
in wordless conversation
that rolls and tumbles,
in sleep gathering motions,
changing as the endless sea
reflects the same billions of stars
that have ever been
in the sight of Creation.

Awareness is that point
where I drift away,
yet still am, no less, here,
to see the changed
and the changeless,
the drifting leaves,
the swells and ebbs,
of self, other,
selflessness
and time.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen