Sister Jina reads this poem from Call Me By My True Names - The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, republished here with the kind permission of Parallax Press.
-------
SILENCE
The paper smells wonderful
as I turn the pages of this ancient book.
The water in my glass
smiles to me with crystal eyes.
Suddenly oceanic waves come up one after another
with their foamy heads.
A cold stone
summons the fog
up on the distant mountain
where the wind is howling hard.
I wake up.
The tip of my tongue is frozen
by the dewdrops
that have been sent to me
by a blade of grass on a late night.
Light flashes across
like the blade of a sword.
Perhaps it is the beginning of a storm.
Clouds rise very quickly.
From the East, urgently,
the sound of the horns is calling.
Where is my palm-leaf raincoat of years ago?
The winds are chasing after the leaves.
The lines and strokes
your brush used to trace
are brown,
the color of your arm,
the sweat that penetrates the rice field.
In this moment, our planet is lost
somewhere in the unknown,
and the giant bird
is shaking its wings in outer space.
Space in puddles
is splashing.
Space is exploding.
There is a sun
struggling up and down
in the ocean
like a giant fish with enormous red eyes.
My telephoto lens
is trying to catch the images of prehistory.
Look! The door is just unlocked,
and the future is let free.
For many lives,
that door has prevented the future from fleeing.
This morning on my way to the woods,
through the singing of the bird,
I know you are there, free,
free on a green path.
There are buds, flowers, and tiny leaves
waving to space.
The hand,
the hand that holds the baton of the talented artist
conducts the world of sound.
All sounds return
to this one point
of great silence,
this point
of great emptiness.
There is too much light—
too much light for a baby just entering life.
I see now
our grandmother
with her hair tied behind her head
in the form of an onion.
She is sweeping bamboo leaves.
She begins to gather the leaves into a pile
and burn them.
The smoke is rising,
warming up the sky.
The Buddha smiles behind a thin cloud.
Tonight the moon is full.