Some of Bhante’s Kalimpong Poems

RHYMED TANKA

Mountains bathed in mist
How mysteriously you stand!
But when darkness falls
Deeper on hill after hill
You grow more mysterious still.

RHYMED HAIKU

On the blue hill-side
Village fires like orange jewels
Gleam at eventide.

THE LAMP OF COMPASSION

My heart-wick now is charred with sin,
And dully red it glows
With greed or hate, afloat upon
The viscous oil of woes.

Oh may I set it flaming with
Compassion's golden fire,
Which feeds upon the twisted strands
Of anger and desire,

And hold its rainbowed radiance up
In wisdom's crystal vase
To light their way who from this world
Are stumbling to the stars!

MOUNTAINS

Golden in laughing sunlight,
Silver in mist and rain,
I see thee, mighty mountains,
Tower heavenward from the plain,

And pray my heart unmoved by
Sweet joys or sufferings dire,
Like thee through cloud and sunlight
May upward still aspire.

MESSENGERS FROM TIBET*

Whence come these asses, brazen-belled,
That jingle down the dusty lane
With big brown bales of tufty wool -
A hundred in a single train?

Whence comes their master, crimson-cloaked,
Who drives them onward from the rear,
With braided and beribboned locks,
And gold- and turquoise-studded ear?

Whence comes this music, weird and wild,
Of clashing cymbals, tinkling bells,
And trumpets deep that thunder out
The sorrows of a hundred hells?

Whence come these banners, bright as gems,
Above the images unfurled
On shadowy temple walls, that seem
Like glimpses of another world?

Whence come these memories, vague as dreams,
Of peaks where snow eternal reigns,
Of boundless grassy wastes beyond -
The silent Central Asian plains?

Whence comes this yearning, sharp as life,
Strong as death's self, to mount and go
Beyond the hundred-headed hills
High up the sky-ascending snow?

Oh land of turquoise, land of gold,
Land of the whispered, mystic lore,
Land of the Buddha, land unknown,
Were you my land in days of yore?

Though dense the mists of birth and death
Your messengers are riding through.
How shall peace fill my heart again
Unless I journey back to you?

BAMBOOS

Among all branched things, I for beauty choose
The yellowness and slimness of bamboos,
Whose bunched leaves twinkle on a gusty day
And back and forth the clattering branches sway.

And when from frozen skies the pure snows fall
In large white flakes that softly mantle all
The loaded branches stoop without a sound
Till their green leaf-tips almost touch the ground.

Then, when they seem a kind of crystal tree
Sparkling with diamond buds and silvery
Shoots, by the snowflakes' overburdening
And their own patience freed, the lithe boughs spring

Up, and in powdery showers the white snow flies
Flung by the wind across the freezing skies,
While, as the bamboos dance in wind and rain,
Like stars the bunched leaves twinkle forth again.

Hence, among branched things I for beauty choose
The yellowness and slimness of bamboos,
Which taught me, more than what in books is writ,
That life is conquered when we yield to it.

STANZAS

Let my life burn like incense
Before Thy precious shrine,
Consuming, for Thy Doctrine's sake,
All thought of `I' and `mine';

That from its smouldering selfhood
May rise up unalloyed
The white cloud of compassion -
Pure perfume of the Void.

THE GARDENER

The gardener crops his rose-tree's hundred buds,
That when it grows
Rich with the breath of Summer, it may bear
One perfect rose.

And even so I prune my budding thoughts,
That in me should
Spring sweetly forth the single perfect bloom
Of Buddhahood.

KANCHENJUNGA

One white wave of snow
Towering against the blue
Sky, with clouds below.



RHYMED HAIKU

Below in the deep
Blue valleys the white clouds
Are lying asleep.


`WHITE MIST DRIFTS DOWN
THE VALLEY DIM...'

White mist drifts down the valley dim,
Then spreads and rises noiselessly,
And the blue hill-tops seem to swim
Like islands in a spectral sea.

Swiftly the silver edges rise
Until the white waves overflow
The shadowy hills, and with the skies
Make one vast sheet as though of snow.

One moment all the world seems white,
A pearly whiteness tinged with blue,
Till the fierce storm-gods rush and smite
That sea of massing clouds in two.

Oh when, with darkness overhead,
In two vast waves they roll apart,
A river like a silver thread
Gleams on the valley's azure heart.


INACCESSIBLE

I saw one misty morning
An orchid on a tree,
And like a flute of silver
Its blossoms called to me.

The plaintive cry of beauty
That mid decay is born
I heard there standing breast-deep
In sparkling dews of dawn,

And longed to pluck those mauve sprays
(Too high, alas, for me!)
From the shadow-weaving branches
Of that old and moss-draped tree.


`THE ASHES OF ALL
MY HEARTACHES...'

The ashes of all my heartaches,
The dust of a hundred dreams,
Are swept away in an instant
When forth one white peak gleams.

After long storm and struggle,
My heart with quietness fills
At the curve of this jade-green river,
The sweep of these dark blue hills.


THE EVENING WALK

We walked where thick green bamboo groves
Point down their speary leaves,
Feeling the quietness of the hills,
The silence that is eve's.

The sun's last light, all flecked with gold,
Full on our path did lie,
And mountains piled up inky blue
Against a pale green sky.

How strange, that when night's first white star
Burned through the heavens wide,
My heart should be so lonely, though
My love walked at my side!


BAMBOO ORCHIDS

With slender rosy stem
And long green leaves thrust out
Pink orchids violet-lipped
Stand poised as though for dance
Upon the gnarled tree's fork.

So fairy-like, so frail,
With long green trailing leaves,
So like a butterfly
Each exquisite rare bloom,
We half expect to see
Them flutter and fly away.


`MANY WERE THE FRIENDS...'

i.
Many were the friends who sought with eager hands to lay
hold of me as I passed along the way;
But I have shaken them all off and come with lonely longing
to the door of my Friend.
Many were the flowers that blossomed around me in the garden
where I strayed;
But I have sought out the White Rose while it was still
bright with morning dew.
Many were the instruments I heard playing in the symphony
of life;
But I have cared to listen only to the melancholy sweetness
of Thy flute beneath the stars.

ii.
When the dawn wings like a great golden bird from the East,
In the cool
of early morning, beside the pine trees,
I wait for Thee...
When the sun hangs poised like a red flamingo in the
heavens,
In the quivering heat of noon, wrapped in the mauve-blue
mist of the jacaranda,
I wait for Thee...
When the pale moon breasts the sky like a silver swan on a
blue lake,
In the lone garden of my dreams, beneath the wide-
spreading branches of the Tree of Life,
I wait for Thee...
While youth comes and goes, while manhood waxes and
wanes as the moon,

In the midst of the world's tumult, and in the deep silence
of my heart,
Through life and through death, through the birth and
dissolution of millions of universes, eternally
I wait for Thee...

iii.
When will He come?
When will the dust of my life blossom beneath
the invincible
ardour of His footsteps?
When will the ashes of my heart flame beneath the
all-enkindling touch of His hands?
O listen! By day the tall grass whispers to the listless trees,
When will He come?
And all night the jasmine murmurs to the stars, When will
He come?
But day and night I make question of the heavens and the
earth,
When will He come? When will He come? When will He
come?

1951

LINES

I questioned, in my greener age,
Whether it were best for me
To blossom Poet or burgeon Sage;
But now in riper days I see,
And with what gladness know it:
The Poet is the truest Sage,
The Sage the sweetest Poet -
The piper his own best tune;
And laugh that I could ever
Have striven thus to sever
The moonlight from the moon.

MAITREYA

Lost in these yellowing Autumn woods, I see
A Buddha seated under every tree;
And each white peak, and each dark violet hill,
Seems a giant Buddha meditating still.
So poised this earth, so quiet its sky above,
They seem like Maitreya deep in thoughts of love.



RHYMED HAIKU

Autumn clouds, like snow
In Summer, drift the way
We all must go.

RHYMED HAIKU

Oh darkness is done
And snow-peaks catch crimson
The smile of the sun!

RHYMED HAIKU

How still the mists lie
Growing deeper till hills are
As blue as the sky!

RHYMED HAIKU

On the hillside wait
Clouds calm as my thoughts
And as intimate.

RHYMED HAIKU

Dawn brightening
Across the sky like the unfolding of
A sunbird's wing!

ANIMIST

I feel like going on my knees
To this old mountain and these trees.
Three or four thousand years ago
I could have worshipped them, I know.
But if one did so in this age
They'd lock him in a padded cage.
We've made the world look mean and small
And lost the wonder of it all.

1952

THE POET'S EYE

Though veil on veil of gleaming blue
Translucence o'er the hills is furled,
The poet's eye sinks through and through
Deep as the beauty of the world;

Deep as the Truth all men desire
He plumbs, and then his vision sings
With lightning glance that sets afire
The poetry of common things.

THE CHARCOAL-BURNERS

Once more the deep blue Winter skies
Dissolve in tenderest green;
Once more in purple shadow rise
The hills; once more is seen
Eve's first faint star; and lo, once more
The charcoal-burners pass my door.

First gnarled old men, then cheerful boys,
With young men in the pride
And blush of opening manhood's joys,
Plod up the mountain-side;
And after, sharing all they do,
Red-shawled, blue-skirted women too.

Up the long, winding mountain road,
With naked, sturdy limbs,
Each bears his black, dull-gleaming load,
Before the red light dims;
With broad, bowed backs, and labouring breath,
Like lost souls on the road to death.

The sweat-drops tell how far away
That world where fancy sees
The glooms wherein they heard all day
A noise of falling trees;
And saw, to charcoal slowly turning,
The beauty of the forest burning.

What tongue can tell, what happy flight
Of fancy e'er discover,
How many trees that loved the light
Were stricken from their lover;
How many forests filled with breath
Charred into hideousness and death.

Year after year, this mountain road
Remorseless will they tread,
Like death's own self, with ghastly load,
Till the forests are all dead;
Like man himself, that will not cease
Till he has ruined Nature's peace.

BUFFALOES BEING DRIVEN
TO MARKET

We know when market-day is near,
For village folk to vend their store,
Because the blue-grey buffaloes
Are driven in the night before.

With long-lashed eyes, and massive horns
Low-curving from each patient head,
They shuffle sadly up the road,
Dusty, and lowing to be fed.

Their drivers, shouting from the rear,
Urge them with blows to left or right,
And, mindful of the broad red sun,
Make haste before the fall of night.

One evening, as I watched them pass,
My heart was heavy for their kind,
To see how slowly one great beast
Limped painfully along behind.

Slowly he moved, and slower yet,
Despite their whip and blood-stained goad,
Till, sagging at the knees, he dropped
On the sere grass beside the road.

He tossed his patient head; I saw
The deep blue eyes were glazed with pain.
Though shivering in a storm of blows
He could not rise and walk again.

And as the darkness fell, I mused
That simple folk who sell and buy
Could herd him to the butcher's shed,
Yet could not let him rest and die.

QUATRAIN

Walking along the mountain paths,
A pink-white cloud I saw appear
Floating athwart the trees - the first
Wild cherry-blossom of the year.

`UP AND DOWN THE
GRAVEL PATH...'

Up and down the gravel path,
Between the flowering trees,
I've walked this Summer afternoon
To give my spirit ease.

I could not idly stand, nor sit
Upon the grassy ground,
For like a mill-wheel in my head
The thoughts flew round and round.

Oh thoughts of life and thoughts of death
Chased thoughts of love and pain
Like golden hawk and sable dove
Inside my reeling brain.

The withered hopes like wind-whirled leaves
Thick on my heart did come,
With dreads like shapes that dance for blood
About the sorcerer's drum.

So up and down the shadowy paths,
Between the moon-white trees,
Through pools of silver, I must walk
To give my spirit ease.

TIBETAN TRUMPETS

Knit with my heart these trumpets seem
That deeply sound from hill to hill;
Booming through mist so mournfully,
Holding their note of pain, until
With its reverberation loud
The sympathetic valleys fill.

Groaning their sorrows out, all night
Far off the giant trumpets play;
But the deep thunder of their grief
Resounds within my heart all day -
Type of the anguish of mankind
Rolling among life's hills for aye.


`IN THE WOODS ARE MANY MORE'

Selling wild orchids at my door one day
A man said, `In the woods are many more...
Deep in the gloom, high on the thickset trees,
Wild orchids hang like clouds of butterflies,
Golden and white, spotted with red and black,
As huge as birds, or tiny as a bee,
Wild orchids which no eye has ever seen
Save ours, who wander in these rich green glooms
All day throughout the year.' I bought his sprays,
Paid him, and bore them in; and as I went
My eyes by chance fell on a shelf of books, -
The Buddha's Teachings, - and thereafter glanced
Up to the Buddha's image as He smiled
Above them from the alcove. Strange it was
That, as my eyes from book to image passed,
Dwelling an instant on that calm, pure Face,
There, with the frail cold blossoms in my hands,
The words that man spoke at my door should ring
Through my stilled heart again and yet again
Like music - `In the woods are many more...'


SUMMER AFTERNOON

Now it is early summer, and the woods
Ring all day with the cuckoo's double cry;
The heat grows week by week, and from the blue
Intolerable heavens beats the sun
Fiercer and fiercer on the huge red flowers
That droop among the grasses; dragonflies
In their bright sapphire mail hang glitteringly
Upon the fountain's edge, four gauze wings poised
For instant flight. At peace amid the sights
And sounds of nature, with a drowsy cat
Limp on my knee, and an unheeded book
Of poems slipping down into my lap
Unread, I dream away the quiet hours.

HAIKU

White clouds on the hills
Linger a while, then vanish
In the blue distance.

HAIKU

Waterfalls from stone
To mossy stone trickling
Down deep cool ravines.



THE SURVIVOR

The loose red earth is washed away,
At once the storm-swept hills are bare;
Gaunt trees fall crashing down the slopes,
And sodden leaves stick everywhere.

Day after day the rains drummed down,
Nor sturdiest growth could meet the shock,
Save one frail bush, with scarlet flowers,
Whose root had pierced the stubborn rock.

A RAINY DAY IN THE MOUNTAINS

The rain has been falling all
day; the maize-fields are sodden and
brown;
The green lush growth of the garden is matted and beaten down;
The hills round their bare blue shoulders draw closer their mantles
grey,
And the sun gleams through like a pearl, but so faintly it scarce
seems day.

Yet the road that winds up from the valley is thronged with
market-folk;
White bulls draw the creaking waggons, lurching beneath the yoke;
With wet brown limbs plod the coolies, bearing their loads from
the plain,
While the women hurry behind them, red-shawled from the
streaming rain.
I have watched all day at the window, while strange thoughts came
and went
As I mused on the life of the mountains, wherewith mine own
seems blent;
And I glimpsed through the rain-dark heavens a cloudless Autumn
sky,
While the mists round the mountains' loins hid no secret from
mine eye.

Deeper the life of the mountains, oh richer and grander far,
Than the huddled life of the cities, where the mushroom
hovels are,
Where no change of tint in Autumn, no show of leaf in Spring,
Brightens the dusty wayside trees where bird ne'er hops to sing.

But the cheerless day is ending, and the rains have almost done;
Creeps with the lengthening shadows a redness round the sun;
With eve-gilt limbs, with baskets of charcoal, rice and corn,
In the shadow of the mountains plod on the mountain-born.

1953


LOOKING AT THE MOON
ON A FROSTY NIGHT

The moon is cold and hard and small
And glitters like a crystal ball;
The trees are steeped in silver light: -
Ah, what a clear-cold winter's night!
WINTER IN THE HILLS

The icy wind has planted
Fresh roses in your cheek;
Your voice rings clear and joyous
Through the cold air as we speak.

By day the sky is bluer,
By night the fire more red;
For coldness brings out colours
That heat could ne'er have bred.

Between the leafless branches
The landscape is ablaze
With green and gold and scarlet
All the short bright winter days.

When youth and beauty vanish,
And death impends above,
May age but make more vivid
The colours of our love.


EPITAPH ON KRISHNA,
PRINCESS IRENE'S SQUIRREL

Now he's gone, the best of squirrels,
Not ev'n his mistress can entice
His happy spirit to her shoulder
From the trees of Paradise.

1954


THE GREAT WORK

With grey-green fir and blue-black pine communing,
With tulip-tree and smooth camellia, - where
The last dark red and first white rose are blooming,
I sit, reclining in my cane armchair.

Head propped on hand, from dawn to dusk the garden,
Through sparse leaves peering with a thousand eyes,
Beholds me as I watch the sunbeams harden
And eve drip coldly from the wintry skies.

Day after day, beside my friend the mountain
I sit, and as in dream hear close at hand
My neighbours, tall bamboo and bubbling fountain,
Talking in words that I half understand.

Not indolence or ennui, soul-destroyers,
Nor sickness convalescent, holds me here,
But the Great Work, which to all mere enjoyers
Of `doing' must as idleness appear.

But if against the sun you ever lifted
Red wine or emerald water in a bowl,
You'll know, recalling how their dregs were sifted,
I clear the turbid liquid of my soul.

And since in those dark waters still is lying
Thick sediment uncleared, so many days
Musing I sit, till, slowly purifying,
Shine through them as through crystal the sun's rays.

LINES

Between the mountain-crest and valley hung
A rainbow fragment, yellow, red and blue,
The iridescent child of light and rain,
And as I saw it from the height above
It seemed a symbol of my life, which gleams
Half way between the heavens and the earth
Rich with the rose of friendship, blue of art,
And glorious yellow of religious lore -
A rainbow fragment that one moment shines
And then dissolves in natal light and rain,
Until, as I believe, a purer heaven
Sees its unbroken circle shine serene.

STANZAS

Here, through the deep dark valley,
There, o'er the snow-peaks high,
Flows the turquoise green of water,
Towers the turquoise blue of sky.

As the eye tracks, so the heart treks
Earth below and heaven above -
Plunges deep to seek out wisdom,
Soars on high in quest of love.

1955

QUATRAIN

Evening. Unstirred the western cloudlets lie
Like russet leaves
in a blue lake of sky.
And in between them, silently and soon,
A gilded pinnace, glides the crescent moon.

RHYMED HAIKU

After three months rain
In a million drops the sun
Shines out again.

1956

TO MANJUSHRI*

Lord of the Lotus, Flaming Sword, and Book,
Eternal Wisdom, Ever-Youthful One,
Dispeller of Illusion - as the sun
Packs off the clouds - with single radiant look, -
O Prince, whose pure compassion undertook
Freely, when Land-of-Snows was overrun
With evils, and the Good Law nigh undone,
Rebirth as him whose keen mind could not brook
Impurity or error, - yet once more
Descend! In this cold heart set up Thy state!
Give me Thy Lotus, spiritual rebirth;
Give me Thy Flaming Sword, that I may score
Vict'ry o'er those who darkly congregate
Against Thy Book, and drive them from the earth!


THE VOICE OF SILENCE

Close, eyes; behold no more the rich array
Of forms and vivid colours. Touch, be still;
Grope not for lover's hand, or lips that will
Sting you awake to bliss by night or day.
Relish no more the scent of new-mown hay,
Or flowers, or incense, nostrils. Take your fill
Of tastes no more, O watery tongue, nor trill
Delicious notes in cadence grave or gay.

For when the senses and the sensual mind
Are laid asleep, and self itself suspended,
And naught is left to strive for or to seek,
Then, to the inmost spirit, thrice refined,
Thrice pure, before that trance sublime has ended,
With voice of thunder, will the Silence speak.

STANZAS

From tone to tone of azure
The landscapes round me rise:
Blue-black are the valleys,
Ethereal blue the skies.

So may my love and passion,
That are darkness in the Abyss,
Be, in the heights of being,
All brilliance and bliss.

1957

TRIOLET

A sweet singing bird
In his summer array
This morning I heard
As he perched on the spray,
A sweet singing bird
With his little heart stirred
This fine morning in May -
A sweet singing bird
In his summer array.

QUATRAIN

Peach-bloom, each Springtide, fills my heart with grief
That the so beautiful
should be so brief.
This year, more bright than bloom of peach you come,
And grief is now so deep that it is dumb.

QUATRAIN

What though so near upon the tree
The golden apples bob and dance?
Around them, like a dragon coiled,
Insuperable circumstance!

STANZAS

If but the soil were richer
'Twould ask no gardener's art:
And lyric flowers would overspread
The greensward of my heart.

The odes would tower like cedars,
Your name bloom like the rose, -
If but the soil were richer
Nor strewn with rocks of prose.


COUPLET

What though the mining's done, th' ore told?
While the vein lasted, it was gold.

SPRING - WINTER

The hills of the horizon
With snow are dappled round.
White blooms the sweet plum-blossom
Six foot above the ground.

As a bird in the blue ether
My joy is on the wing
'Twixt the purity of Winter
And the loveliness of Spring.

STUDY IN BLUE AND WHITE

Though depths of perfect azure
Invest the sun on high,
The hills, with haze and distance,
Show darker than the sky,

Save where, as though disrupting
The blueness of the real,
Shine in their absoluteness
The snows of the Ideal.

LEPCHA SONG

The Teesta in the Summer
From distant mystic lands
Winds like a vein of turquoise
Between her silver sands.

In the Rains, with splintered tree-trunks,
Foam, and forest creatures dead,
She hurtles tiger-tawny
Along her bouldered bed.

In Autumn, calm and queenly,
She descendeth statelily
From her castle in the mountains
To her palace by the sea.

When Winter comes, the garments
Wherein she sweeps arrayed
Flash malachite in sunshine,
Gleam amethyst in shade.

Her silver arms in Spring time
She coils, no cloud above,
Around the smoke-blue mountains
And sings to him I love.

QUATRAINS

Spring, in my boyhood it was understood,
Meant crystal streamlets full of bream and perch,
A mist of bluebells in a little wood,
And lambtails shivering on the silver birch.

Now, for my riper years, the meaning's swerved
To mountain rivers green as tourmalines,
And galaxies of waxen orchids curved
Against the ink-blue foliage of the pines.

QUATRAIN

Though sinks into the western hills
The sun through orange-amber bars,
In silence deep the moon fulfils
Her destined path among the stars.

1958

COUPLET HAIKU

Above black pine-trees, on my homeward way,
An orange moonrise in a sky of grey.

THE GUARDIAN WALL

With sweet compassionate faces,
Hands outstretched, humanity's friends,
Up to the golden Zenith
The Hierarchy ascends.

In glory on glory I see Them,
Helpers of all of us;
But the loveliest Bodhisattvas
Are the anonymous.

Lotus-seated, rainbow-circled
In the heaven of the Void,
They rear about the race a Wall
That may not be destroyed.

Its base is built of coral -
The blood that They have shed;
Its turrets sheerest diamond -
The life of purity led.

O Hierarchy Celestial,
O Tara, from Thy throne,
Grant that in Thy Great Guardian Wall
My life may be one stone!
1959

RHYMED HAIKU

Old frog on the brink
Of the lotus pond jumped in -
Not stopping to think.

HAIKU

Visitors all day!
Morning mist, afternoon flowers -
And now the full moon.

QUATRAIN

The periwinkle flowers among the stones;
Where naught else lives, it grows -
A common hardy plant, scarce beautiful,
That shall outlast the rose.

1961

THREE COUPLET HAIKUS

i.
How bare and dead the branch! But look, again
Burst forth pink buds, as soon as
touched by rain.

ii.
The red leaf falls upon the lake below.
Ah well, perhaps the water's
lovelier so!


iii.
Though vigorously the high wind shakes the bough,
The unripe fruit
sticks on to it, somehow.

TIBETAN REFUGEE

You were my mother once, the Scriptures say,
A hundred or ten thousand
lives ago,
And now with bloodstained feet you trudge the roads
Of India, exiled from your native land.
Driven, not exiled! The barbarian horde
That burned down temples, looted monasteries,
Tortured to death old holy lamas, they
That stood your husband up against a wall
And shot him, sent your brothers and your sons
To prison for a sullen look or word, -
Even they who on the holy citadel
Set their unholy flag, the flag of blood, -
They drove you forth with terror of the whip
And torment of the unfilled belly. You
Were working on the roads. Twelve hours a day
Breaking the stones, and you were seven months pregnant.
One night you slipped away. A month it took you
To reach the Indian border. On the way
Was born the baby strapped upon your back,
Born by the roadside. But you could not wait,
And feeble as you were pressed on and on
Through leech-infested jungle, dark and rain,
While all the time the dread of what might come
Behind you, drummed like madness in your heart.
Mother, you do not listen to your son!
Your eyes are dull and vacant, you do not hear
Your infant crying for your breast, nor see
Kind faces round you, hands outstretched to aid!
Above the clouds you see, as in a dream,
The golden roofs of the Potala gleam.

1962

SPRING

The quick sap rises in the dry stalk;
On naked boughs the furled green buds appear;
Returning swallows beat about
The clay-built house they left last year.
Earth smiles, and like an almond tree
The Bodhichitta flowers in me.

PLANTING THE BODHI TREE

Triyana Vardhana Vihara, Kalimpong, 18 June 2506

The morning sunshine saturates the heavenly blue as we
Beside our mountain
hermitage plant firm the Bodhi Tree.

Oh not with turquoise-hafted trowel, nor yet with spade of gold,
We turn the warm and fragrant mould to plant our Bodhi Tree.

No streams of milk from silver pots, no sprinkled rare perfumes
From musk distilled, or crimson blooms, refresh our Bodhi Tree.

With Faith and Energy for hands, and Mindfulness for spade,
The soil of Meditation's glade we dig deep for our Bodhi Tree.

By day among the forest boughs the peacock preens a listless wing;
No frogs in deep-voiced chorus sing all night unto our Bodhi Tree.

With lightning in its dark blue breast if monsoon cloud appears,
What use? Oh blood and sweat and tears must water well our
Bodhi Tree!

The heart-shaped leaves will twinkle out, huge boughs bespread,
and then
May shelter multitudes of men beneath our towering Bodhi Tree.

And so, with joyous-solemn chant, this gold-blue morning, we
Beside our cliff-perched hermitage root fast the Bodhi Tree.