A Dialogue between Eye and Ear


Deep silence opens like a door.
Eye glimpses the banquet hall
With its polished parquet floor,
And marches right in. What gall!

As if heaven could be assaulted…
As if a beggar should be so bold…
Meanwhile, blind Ear has halted
And waits at the threshold.

Eye is dazzled by the glistening
Of silver and crystal on the table,
While Ear stands there just listening,
Like a blind wife, invisible.

“Come in now” says Eye to Ear.
“The table’s set so take a seat.
The place is empty: No one’s here.
And the host insists we eat.”

Blind Ear groped and found a chair
And sat there like a battered spouse,
While Eye cased the places where
Light illumed the Master’s house.

“Where are we?” blind Ear to deaf Eye asks.
“Do our setting just describe.”
Eye said: “On the wall are masks
Representing every tribe.”

Ear said: “I feel a breeze, and hear birds.
There must be a window open to gardens lush.”
Yes, we are in the master's menagerie -
Wild beasts and birds in the bush.”

Ear just sat there, hands in a cup,
In a posture of deep feeling,
While Eye went on to drink and sup
And talk about the ceiling.

“It is a vaulted pyramid of glass
In which hangs a star-lit lamp
Around which tiny planets pass
On the ecliptic ramp.”

“O Eye, you sketch a pretty image
Of matter spinning with no pause.
But even with all your knowledge
You forget the laws.”

Ear hums: “Do Re Mi Fa So La Si Do.”
Proud Eye blinked and blurted back:
“Is differences in tone all you know?
Why on Earth attack

Reality – things in space extended?
Shut up and eat your meal.”
But that was not what Ear intended.
No. She could feel

Thoughts thronging the mind's emporium,
From pick-pockets to computer thieves -
Bad children of the sensorium.
And for that she grieves.

Deaf Eye went on: “The table's set for three.
The empty chair is for all our children -
That brood of self-willed thoughts led by me.
Is not vision a thought splayed open?”

Though she looked like she was sleeping,
Blind Ear sat listening in the Soothe,
To birds chirping, peepers peeping.
“You are no guide to truth.”

She said: “You trick me and make me eat
This offal that you call mentation.
The seat you sit on is not your seat.
You broke in without invitation.”

Eye replied: “The master has for us arranged
A re-past of mental leisure.
It is you, not I, who are deranged
And prone to seizure.”

“O dear deaf Eye” blind Ear cries.
“It is I who guard you in the night.
The skies I know are more lofty shies
Than your poor sight.

“Listening to the music of the firmament,
I become even more curious.
Our Star seems to be an experiment,
Revolving around Sirius.

“Moons everywhere are being born
In a blessed octave called 'Creation.'
But more marvelous is Vision shorn
Of all abstract ideation.”

“The spectral inter-penetration
Of phenomena and noumena
Has no just origination
Except in the Holy Arcana.”

“You sound like the Queen of Pharaoh”
Said Eye to Ear. “Shut up and eat
Mind your master, above, below,
For we must meet

Our common destiny in a skull:
A blooded-washed mass of nerve and fat
Powered by a heart more like a hull
Than a pump in a vat.”

All power to you, Eye, but I grow tired
Of your bleached linear perspective.”
“True” Eye replied, “The human brain is wired
And so defective.”

“You, Eye, stole and ran with the light
And so drove the jagged chaotic brain
Like a bad master who, out of spite,
Slaps his slave.”

Eye says: “The brain is a plantation
Where slaves work for food, not wages.
Our children – the selves in mentation -
Are all listed in the neuronal pages.”

“You have never been allied to silence,
And so you leave your body!” Ear did sob,
“It is a brazen act of inner violence.
Even now, thoughts mob

The hall in which we eat. They are really not
My children. They encode the Eye's '-ism,'
Fleeting floating images in the blood: thought
Besots the whole organism.”

Deaf Eye got up and began to case the place.
But he found no clues as to Man's experiment,
Except that a big bang blew them into space
By accident.

When the Master came to his house,
He found Eye rifling the premises.
Ear tried to apologize for her spouse,
But Eye’s nemesis

Placed him under guard, on the porch,
Half-way between god and beast.
And there he stands with a torch,
Illuminating the feast.

While the other senses – taste, smell, touch –
Entered dressed in rags and tatters.
Each is in element in the real as such,
Transforming matters.

So the senses served up a high cuisine.
Heart and head and hand were invited.
The Master stood behind the scene,
And the psyche was united.



Hafiz 6 Translated from the Persian

I fear that these tears of anguish will tear the veil,
And that the sealed secret will become a worldly tale

Given enough patience, a ruby will be born of mud,
But only if soaked in the liver’s blood.

I’ll go to the tavern, weeping and demanding justice.
Only there can I be free of this compulsive anguish.

From every corner I shot an arrow of heat-seeking prayer.
Out of where the arrows meet, steps an honest worker.

Unfold the story, step by step, to the owner of your heart.
But don’t talk too much lest the quiet Truth depart.

Through the alchemy of mercy, my face has turned to gold.
Yes, from the joy of thy grace, dirt becomes gold.

Bewildered by the Watcher’s pomp and the spectacle,
The homeless beggar has become respectable.

Aside from beauty, a subtle finesse is required if one
Is to conform to the ways of one possessing vision.

The crown of your cypress a light-cut gem does hold.
But at your doorstep, human heads are so much mold.

If you can smell her tresses in your hand’s palm,
Then take a deep breath and try to stay calm.







To a Merchant Retiring


Just a face on the wall, you were, in youth,
Too small to lift the standard stone blocks.
So, for a smile, you served the masons
Cold green tea in little china cups.

In adolescence you drove donkeys hauling
Cut stone for the wall at Yinchuan.
Captured in the Ordos by the Kyrgyz,
You survived by talking to their horses.

You seldom talk about that. Who ever asked?
As for the land beyond, we know nothing -
Only that the steppe is littered with bones
And stretches all the way to Mount Kunlun.

But records show that, in the year of the dragon,
The emperor ransomed you for a bolt of silk;
And that, when you came through Jiaquan Gate,
You brought seven horses and a camel.

The army grabbed you. You knew too much.
So they made you a scout and sent you out
Over the horizon. You were gone so long
They said you had died or had deserted.

But eventually you'd show up, leading horses
And camels laden with priceless treasure:
Carpets, dried fruits, lapis lazuli,
And brief messages of confidence.

Such men do not escape imperial notice.
Court officials wanted you for their own ends,
But the Jade Ruler saw through their plots and,
Esteeming a wise enemy over foolish friends,

Sent you out again, laden with gifts,
And goods, and messages of peace,
Meticulously loaded and addressed
To the barbarian chiefs, those proud kagans.

All this was too much for the palace guard,
Who banished you from Chang-an. So you returned
To you ancestral village where, it seemed,
At every moment caravans depart and arrive.

Your walled garden never got enough rain.
So you turned it into a brisk emporium:
Jade baubles, knic-knaks, bric-a-brac -
And a furnace to melt down Roman coins.

As times changed, you moved to meet demand,
Importing exotic elixirs and rare herbs.
And later, sacred icons and wisdom texts.
As values changed, so did the currency.

You, hoarding nothing but investing all,
Set up way-stations in the middle of nowhere.
You helped build temples to the Goddess of Mercy
And stocked their pools with golden fish.

Now rumor has it that you hang with the monks,
Doing nothing for weeks on end.
Could it be that you have finally arrived?
Or have you gone crazy staring at the wall?

Last we checked, you were sitting under the eaves,
Spine straight as an arrow. But who would notice?
You sit so still that passing shoppers take you
For the grain in the wall's woodwork.





Time and the Hard Heart


When the glacier reaches the sea, it calves off.
So does the present moment split and fall away.

What happened yesterday is light years away,
Distant, submerged, and fading fast.

You said you would never forget, but already
You’re sleeping in the arms of some other.

From here, one can see the tips of the jagged
Bergs as they slowly drift out, unto oblivion.

“Go with the flow” you often said, and how easy
It is to drift, face down, to ‘southern climes.’

“Chip off the old black” they called you. Yet,
By law, you’ll warm, melt and evaporate.

Rising, you’ll blow back as a cloud.
And then what? Get snagged on a mountain?

Behind the glacier, a stark massif lurks,
Its huge shoulders bristling with spruce.

Its peaks are hidden in an ice-misting shroud,
The top of which sparkles in the sunlight.

Within the swirling snow squall is found
The single snowflake with its seven parts.

Just as the snow drifts and piles up so the karma
Of ‘good people’ who never doubt the self.

The world is like frozen water. Yet the nature
Of what we are is a misting humid vapor.

No wonder the glacier groans and cracks
As it staggers under its own full weight.









Einstein at the Carnival of Being


The trick with the table salt in solution
Revealed crystal structures in agitation
And showed the atom to the naked eye.

Energy and mass you aptly squared by light’s
Own measure. Now the circus horses run wild
In a vast corral of bounded potential.

Your last trick was best of all. You threw
Your wand up in the air. It did not fall
But twisted spacetime while we watched.


John Paul Maynard can be contacted at tulku7@verizon.net