Upward a great distance was I led
On a way that seemed
To deceive the sky
To cross a sea
…Wind moving over Water…Dispersion…
Before a steel wave
Of crashing halberds
In the sharp hands
Of squat, little, baleful forms
Corkscrewing me upward
Along a knife edge
Of steps...
And the Voice inside my head,
The Voice that is a Vision,
Water
flows in only to flow out.
Waving forms clouds of
Little toy soldiers
Tumbling around me in disjunctions,Little toy soldiers
Everything arising
In dependence on
An other
And somewhere far away, as in another world,
A divination was performed:
“A subject with bare buttocks
straitened under the stump of a tree.“
Climbing up a jabber of steps,
A cacophony of curses swirling,
Moving inside a maniacal knot
Of imprecations, all strange and unknown.
A cyclone of speech:
Words like the loud stomping of boots,
Words like the rattle of armor and weapons,
Crushing against me, pushing me on.
"He enters a dark valley, and for three
years has no prospect of deliverance”
Up and up a spiral staircase of a tower
Like a twisting sea
Led a captive
Within a dream...
…Radiance
clinging inside an Abyss…A distance not yet forded…
Propelled through free associations of
architecture
Inside spiraling flights of stairs like
Lightning flashes far out at sea,
Past honeycombs of doors,
And emanations of entrance ways,
Ascending a fleeting glimpse of
Rapidly dissolving floors
Spanned in ghostly steps.
And the Voice said,
A
prime minister's mind should be broad enough
For poling a boat.
And somewhere the oracle revealed,
“A pig bearing on its back a load of mud”
The shifting floors of the tower
Branching into long braids of corridors
Guarded sullenly by lank queued sentries,
Foreshortened and shadowless, retrogressing
“fancies there is a carriage full of
ghosts”.
Into the narrow crossing of tangled Centuries
In which a river of dream cascades.
And from a room high above
I heard a Chinese lute
playing
"The Ambush From Ten Sides",
An accelerando of defeat...
The Voice intoned,
A
straight foot is not afraid of a crooked shoe
And the next line of the fortune was read:
“The crane crying out in her hidden
retirement,”
The sound of the music waterfalling
As I, without gravity,
Rising like a
cloud of steam,
Was whisked by a turbulent gust
On a climb performed by a musical canon of
soldiers,
A score of utter chaos
For a presto march..
"and her young ones responding to her. It
is as if it were said,"
And the Voice disclosing,
A
candle lights others and consumes itself.
“'I have a cup of good spirits,' “
Just the way flames march up an incline of
fuel,
So the stairs rippled past
Like ghosts
And the response were,
'I will partake of it with you”.
...Fire rising out of a Lake…Divergence…
Shoved by this hoo-ha of halberdiers
Up incredibly narrow stairs
Tumbling down like
A toss of
I Ching yarrow stalks,
“As
sweat cures fevers, so do proclamations cure rebellions.”
An oracle predetermined in another dream
As the ancient tower steps,
Like lines of a
hexagram
-Solid or broken-
Lay before me as the mystic
sortilege
Of a distant cleromancer who threw my
fortune!
And the Voice pronounced,
Seas
cannot be measured by cup
And the augury lay bare,
“Now he beats his drum, and now he leaves
off."
And I realized this fortress tower,
Displaced
and floating away,
"Now he weeps, and now he sings like
chanticleer"
Was like a series of boxes,
One inside the other,
Smaller and smaller.
"trying to mount to heaven with a plumaged
voice"
As I was shoved upward,
Floor by floor,
box by box,
That I was deciphering a demented message
Of
my fortune inside each one,
Each insanely cracked as tortoise
shells
Placed in oracular fire.
"But a cock is not fitted to fly high, and
in attempting to do so will only suffer hurt”.
And the Voice that is a Vision remarked,
Watch
till clouds part to see moonlight
Scenes wavering in torch-light:.
Recursions
Of halberdiers telescoping behind
“A young fox that has nearly crossed the
stream,"
Recursions
Of staircases telescoping in
front,
And along the way,
"when its tail gets immersed. There will be
no advantage in any way”.
Tesselated in multiple, Cubist floors,
“Let him stir himself up, as if he were
invading the Demon region,
Wings of flickering, imbricated halls and
chambers
Of just sufficient measure
To contain all the darkness
Of this corner of the world,
Nested one inside another.
"where for three years rewards will come to
him (and his troops)
from the great kingdom”.
The Vision spoke,
Learning
without thought is deceptive;
Thought without learning is perilous.
And I suddenly knew
From out of the blue
I had been caught in a disguise
I still had on,
And captured in lie after lie at a border gate.
I was a shadow puppet
dressed in donkey skin
Dancing on a thread
…The marsh speaks in a gentle wind…Avoid
Illusion…
Spun in spiral loops
By hands that worked me
Toward the fortress top,
And thrown
Like a lump of clay on a potter's wheel
That was already a ruined pot
Upon the final floor
And the moment I wondered where I was
Instantly I heard
The Voice that is a Vision:
"Sixty-four floors from Earth to
Heaven with six steps in between”
I flowed within a contortion
Of bodies,
Weapons in hand,
Pushing me onward
Within patterns of movement
That pulsed in atomic panoplies of a dream
"He has lost his horses, but let him not
seek for them;”
Driven through rotary corridors
Of oneiric syntax
That were forgotten as soon as they were
met
.“they will return of themselves”
Understanding in an oceanic flash
That my destination lie
But a short remove from where I stood
As the music grew louder
And the Voice again,
A
team of horses will struggle to chase down
A spoken word
And a cleromancer somewhere divined,
"Supinely sinking deeper in the mud. a
person lame on one leg"
And there rose the entrance to a private
apartment.
Personal guards sitting in a watery lotus
Parted the sliding doors
As though able to fight a wolf with wheat
stalks,
A door behind which even a cornered hare might
bite.
"who yet manages to tramp along. Going
forward will be fortunate”.
The room snapped shut
Like a sword inside a scabbard,
Like a crossbow,
As suddenly there appeared a giant
Of very tiny proportions,
A diminutive colossus of a man,.
And there he sat in an old camp chair,
The great General,
Before whom I was made to kneel.
l learned then
Life unfolds as a way to unmask you.
Hidden influence of mountains...Yield as a subordinate to breakthrough...
After the moon and clouds of 8000 li drift
on
Inside an impenetrable pass of bones.
“Her blind of one eye, and yet able to
see."
The chasm surrounding me narrows and narrows.
Missiles pelting down within this hemmed-in pass.
Beneath arrow after arrow
I move and
dodge
Inside this box canyon
In which may roam
Only tiny birds like
sparrows,
Flying through a hail of arrows.
There will be advantage in her maintaining
the firm correctness of a solitary widow”
And the Voice that is a Vision said,
An
aggrieved army is sure to win
This was a place to be erased in battle,
Which I never had the slightest intention of
fighting in.
“A subject straitened before a frowning
rock. He lays hold of thorns."
And the Voice within the Vision
Transcendentally informed me
That I was an ambassador from a foe,
One who had meandered too far afield
And arrived at a place he shouldn't have
"If he make speeches, his words cannot be
made good."
No sense crying in deluded rivers
The spiraling hawk
Of stairs swooped down
For a mouse
And my fortune read,
He enters his palace, and does not see his
wife. There will be evil.
A suicide mission for an infiltrator;
To make a survey of the enemy camp and defenses.
"the younger sister who is to be married
off protracting the time."
Here within this distant fortress tower
Now become a mere wisp of steam
From a hot pot of tea,
The perspiration of a dream,
As the shadows of a candle fed upon his
visage.
And the Voice said,
Everything's
ready except the east wind.
She may be late in being married, but the
time will come
He motioned me to the table,
He and I alone
As he fingered the delicate trigger of
his tea pot
And poured an arrow of tea into a steaming cup
Of emptiness
"the young lady bearing the basket, but
without anything in it,"
That loomed upon the table
And shone like a mirror
As large as the latent contents of this
fortress,
A liquid emitting from the barrel of a
spout
That filled his own cup
But not mine,
And there he sat on his trusty camp chair
In blurbs of pouring, a babble of liquid
Like a madman’s words...
And the Voice declared,
Like sitting on a carpet of needles.
And the next sortilege unveiled,
"and the gentleman slaughtering the sheep"
As he emptily
looking up, but with position,
"but without blood flowing from it. There
will be no advantage in any way"
Gazed into my eyes
And said to me,
"Let us place legs upon the snake
Now that you have drawn it”.
But before I could think to speak, he said,
"Do not adjust your hat under the plum tree
Or tie your lace in the rice field
Lest the owner suspect you of stealing
from his fields”.
And he placed my secret map upon the table.
It was superfluous to say anything,
And I remained silent,
Not knowing who I was
With donkey lips placed upon a horse’s
mouth,
I drank from an empty cup,
And savored the fine essence of tea
In a meditation
on the hopelessness of mine and all fate.
And he said, ”perhaps you will continue to
somehow enjoy
That head on top which you have placed a
head."
And with a wave of his hand
He said,
“I recommend that
you not employ handsome servants”
And I was led away to prison.
And there the dream dissolved.
And the reading was closed:
