Reflections on a subtitled movie seen
in Boulder, 1963

Defeated Japanese soldiers,
abandoned on a small Pacific Island,
argued over what to do,
how to find food. They fought,
killed, eventually ate
each other.

The last one
carried his ragged
childhood doll, like those laced
to kamikaze pilots. He stumbled
to a western bluff where a black
and white sunset oiled calm water.
Sitting on a broad rock, he crossed his legs
in a lotus position. His torn face filled
the screen, his gaze turned
upon some other
shore.

Each time I sit,
crossing my legs,
I practice
the same ending,
open
to the same
setting
sun.

(No. 62 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

This old Japanese “art film” (as they used to be called) has metastasized in my mind. It has never left me. I didn’t understand meditation at the time. It seemed alien, useless, foreign. Live and let learn.

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)