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Qian Xi Teng

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The Monk and the Moon

with apologies to Jia Dao

A scene of Magritte-like delicacy
materialised before a poet
and us during Chinese lesson:
a still night draped by darkness
in which even the birds
slumbered among the trees
circling the lake. And a monk
waiting beneath a sickle of a moon
outside a door no one opened.

So, the teacher told our drowsy class,
now the poet had a problem -
should the verb he would choose
direct the monk to swing the door
back on its hinges (quietly, out of consideration
for the imagined sleepers behind it),
or would a discreet pounding be better
(to signal their guest’s arrival)?
So, he asked, what would we have done?

Why did we begin to argue (half-heartedly,
through the gloom of afternoon fatigue)
about whether to preserve the sheet of silence
or to ripple it? What could we have done?
Whether knock or push was resolved long ago,
after an absorbed walk (and narrow escape)
in the path of a speeding cart,
without us. The slatted walls
maintained their composure
as images fluttered like sleep birds
into our consciousness,

unfolding into colour as we all paused,
listening to the monk
stop beside the moonlit door
and the echo of that one knock
leaping like a fish in the pool
of silver silence.

 

Jia Dao is a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty whose poem, “Before Li Ning’s Peaceful Residence”, inspired this work

Page(s) 52

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