Three Poems by Doug Van Gundy
Stay Home, the Night
I’ve burnt all the holy pages I used to carry,
but poems flare in my heart.
— Ikkyu (trans. Berg)
I’ve burnt all the holy pages I used to carry,
warmed my hands by their crooked
little fire. What I thought were words
of divine wisdom rose into the evening
on glowing rafts of thin, cheap paper,
leaving me in the gloaming with only
a stone wall and the climbing ivy
to keep me company. I sit by the ashes
until I can stir them with my finger.
Clouds have covered the few stars
that dared show their faces at twilight
and even the fireflies have chosen
to stay home. The night is dark
and the epistles and psalms I trusted
have gone back to simple carbon
and unspoken and misguided intentions.
The fire has burned all it can burn
but poems flare in my heart.
*
Pastoral with Unexpected Water
Rain drips from the roof tip
loneliness sounds like that
— Ikkyu (trans. Berg)
Rain drips from the roof tip,
drumming the ground
with its long fingers.
It’s been months since the sky
has given up even so much
as a light drizzle,
and the pleasure the rain brings
to the plants and animals
and landscape is palpable.
In puddles that have appeared
on the sidewalk and along the street,
sparrows and titmice splash
and wash and cajole with
such happiness, they almost
seem like our children
or us theirs. Such ceremony,
such celebration in every cell
and fiber in a five-mile radius.
Despite the joy falling
from leaf and limb and lintel,
you are alone inside
the storm. You want to reach
out, you want to connect
and commune, you want to
lay on the wet ground and hear
the parched soil drinking that bounty
of unexpected water, the little sighs
and gurglings the earth makes.
It’s familiar music to you,
loneliness sounds like that.
*
Jasmine, Saving
Poems should come from bare ground,
night falling on night falling on a black landscape.
— Ikkyu (trans. Berg)
Poems should come from bare ground,
you should taste minerals and soil
as they fall from your open mouth.
Poems should live a day at most,
flickering and rising like mayflies
from stones in the middle of the river.
Poems should open and close
like the night-blooming jasmine,
saving its deliciousness for the dark.
Poems should rise from the moonless
dirt, bloom for a moment then collapse —
night falling on night falling on a black landscape.
Poet’s note: The italicized lines in these poems form the whole of three different two-line poems by the fifteenth century Zen master, Ikkyu, who’s enigmatic verse is surprisingly contemporary.
Doug Van Gundy directs the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Guernica, Poets & Writers, and Oxford American. He is the author of a book of poems, A Life Above Water and co-editor of the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary Writing from West Virginia. In addition to teaching and writing, Doug plays fiddle, guitar and mandolin in the traditional string band, Born Old.