issue 22: winter 2020
Three Poems from “Langkasuka”
17
Late night teh tarik, day
shade, more teh, sleep
among the kingdom of dripping leaves
in the Wood
the shadows the performance
voice and string and drum
called dikir barat: sung quatrains exchanged
called sesuai: harmonious
called nyawa: soul, breath of life
Winds bring us to the place where
sweet incense turns to jasmine water
called berjamu: feasting, propitiating the spirits
called lagu berjalan: traveling music between states of awareness
called sentuhan hati: heart’s intuition
Winds take us away, unsettled,
unquelled, inner gates released
20
All under heaven say I’m vast, vast but like nothing
To be like nothing enables vastness
To be like this or that is to be but a speck of grain forever
There are three jewels I always embrace:
The first is called “compassion”
The second is called “restraint”
The third is called “unwilling to be first under heaven”
To be compassionate enables courage
To be restrained enables expansiveness
To be unwilling to be first under heaven enables the transfiguration of vessels
Now to give up compassion for courage, to give up restraint for expansiveness, to give up the last
for the first is certain death
Through compassion prevail in war and strengthen the defenses
Heaven builds so as to build ramparts of compassion
22
Look at it and you can’t see it
Listen to it and you can’t hear it
Reach for it and you can’t grasp it
Shapeless shape
Formless form
Ineffable image
To recognize the ancient origins
is called following the thread of the way
"Langkasuka" will be published in Yang’s forthcoming book Line and Light.
Jeffrey Yang is the author of Hey, Marfa; Vanishing-Line; and An Aquarium.