Classic Poem

(mental sketch modified)

Out of the gray steel of imagination
akebi vines entwine the clouds,
wild rose bush, humus marsh
everywhere, everywhere, such designs of arrogance
(when more busily than noon woodwind music
amber fragments pour down)
how bitter, how blue is the anger!
At the bottom of the light in April's atmospheric strata,
spitting, gnashing, pacing back and forth,
I am Asura incarnate
(the landscape sways in my tears)
Shattered clouds to the limit of visibility
in heaven's sea of splendor
sacred crystalline winds sweep
spring's row of Zypressen
absorbs ether, black,
at its dark feet
the snow ridge of T'ien-shan glitters
(waves of heat haze & white polarization)
yet the True Words are lost
the clouds, torn, fly through the sky
Ah, at the bottom of the brilliant April,
gnashing, burning, going back and forth,
I am Asura incarnate
(chalcedonic clouds flow,
where does he sing, that spring bird?)
The sun shimmers blue,
Asura and forest, one music,
and from heaven's bowl that caves in and dazzles,
throngs of trees like calamites extend,
branches sadly proliferating
all landscapes twofold
treetops faint, and from them
a crow flashes up
(when the atmospheric strata become clearer
& cypresses, hushed, rise in heaven)
Someone coming through the gold of grassland,
someone casually assuming a human form,
in rags & looking at me, a farmer,
does he really see me?
At the bottom of the sea of blinding atmospheric strata
(the sorrow blue blue and deep)
Zypressen sway gently,
the bird severs the blue sky again
(the True Words are not here,
Asura's tears fall on the earth)
As I breathe the sky anew
lungs contract faintly white
(body, scatter in the dust of the sky)
The top of a ginkgo tree glitters again
the Zypressen darker
sparks of the clouds pour down.