We also shared an interest in the cultures of India and East Asia. Though my knowledge of Mediterranean culture and the classics was scanty, Laughlin's poetic engagement with classical references and themes fascinated and instructed me. I saw Jay at work a few times. Once when I was staying as a guest in the Bank Street apartment, he came in as I was leaving. We overlapped for half a day. He was dictating a letter into a little tape recorder even as we chatted. I never wrote a letter to Jay that he didn't answer. Looking back, I realize that that letter-writing spirit belongs to the old days. And old days of which I am part of, too. A time when people took pleasure in writing letters by hand and were gratified, truly, to find others who would be timely and generous in sharing their thoughts and feelings in this medium. But grace and appropriate etiquette, good form and good playfulness, conviviality and integrity are timeless.

[01:05]

Jay Laughlin's cool, elegant, understated wit and his alertness came out of a poet's mind, came out of wild mind. Jay was a fine skier. I would like to claim him as an urbane mountain man. Now I'm going to read you a few points by Jay Laughlin. He was so modest about his own poetry through his whole life that he published never through his own press, but through little tiny presses on the side, and he never advertised anything he wrote. But he was very good. And he was a great lover of women. Why do you never enter my dreams? Nightly I await you, but you do not come. The lamp burns and the table is spread. The Thalernian wine is decanted, yet it is dawn and you have not appeared. Are you afraid of my dreams?

[02:07]

They are loving and will not harm you. Or do you in sleep go visiting the dreams of another? Two Spoons After we have made love and are sleepy, we curl together like two spoons, each fitting closely in to the other. My arm is around you, you my hand holding your breast. I can even feel your feet with my toes. Your long hair is between your back and my chest. I whisper very softly into your ear for a moment, you squeeze my fingers, and we fall asleep. The Goddess I have seen the Goddess with my mortal eyes. They were filming down the street.

[03:08]

It was Meryl Streep. She was attended by five trailers, eight trucks, thirty technicians, and four policemen. The whole street was illumined with a heavenly blaze. She walked up the steps of the house four times. And I know that she saw me and smiled at me. She knew that I was her devotee. She went into the house. But they said the next scene was inside and I couldn't go in. Will I ever see her again, my Goddess? But it doesn't really matter. I saw her and she knew me. Love's Altar Let me bow down before the altar of love. Let me genuflect at that sacred place.

[04:12]

It's useless for you to protest that this shrine is ordinary and common to all your sects. For me, it's the locus of the sacrament, the altar where the ritual of the mysteries are enacted. What are you smiling about? My dear wife asked me this morning at breakfast. Nothing, I said. Nothing in particular. Oh, she said, you're back at that again. Imagining you are a reincarnation of the Buddha. Let me do that one again. This is good. You can all live with this one. What are you smiling about? My dear wife asked me this morning at breakfast. Nothing, I said. Nothing in particular. Oh, she said, you're back at that again.

[05:16]

Imagining you are a reincarnation of the Buddha. And one more by Jay Laughlin, which actually is sort of partially dedicated to me. It's called My Old Gray Sweater. Not dedicated, but I'm in the point. My old gray sweater in the back of the closet. What will you do with it? The one with buttons down the front. The heavy one I used to wear when I could still cut firewood. What will you do with it? The Salvation Army? I guess some worthy and needy man can still get a lot of use out of it. But you know, I'd really rather not. Please take it out into the woods and nail it to that big oak. Gary jokes that he wants to re-enter the food chain. He wants to be eaten by a bear. I'd like my sweater just to rot away in the woodlands.

[06:18]

Let the birds peck at it and build their nests with the gray wool. Please nail me to the big oak. And I'm going to finish with Jay Laughlin by reading a poem that I wrote for Jay that I wrote six or seven years ago while I was reading the manuscript of his collected poems and was so struck by his beautiful love poems for all the affairs he had and wondering how he had the nerve to actually write those poems and publish them. There's a real tension between truth and safety. So this is a poem. I said I can never publish this while Jay's alive or even read it aloud. So I've never read this aloud in public and it's never been published.

[07:20]

This is my first opportunity to share it with anybody. It's called What to Tell Still. Reading the manuscript pages of Laughlin's collected poems with an eye to writing a comment, how warmly Jay speaks of Pound, I think back to at 23 I sat in a lookout cabin in gray whipping wind at the north of the northern Cascades and wondered if I should go visit Pound in St. Elizabeth's and studied Chinese at Berkeley and went to Japan instead. Jay puts his love for women, his love for love, his devotion, his pain, his causing of pain right out there. I'm 63 now and I'm on my way to pick up my 10-year-old stepdaughter and drive the carpool. I have just finished a five-page letter to the county supervisors

[08:21]

dealing with a former supervisor, now a paid lobbyist, who has twisted the facts and gets paid for his lies. Do I have to deal with this creep? I do. James Laughlin's manuscripts sitting on my desk. I read them late last night preparing to write a comment. And Bert Watson's book, Translations of Sue Scher, next in line for a comment on the back. September heat. The Watershed Institute meets, planning more work with the BLM, and we have visitors from China, land managers, who want to see how us locals are doing with our plan. Editorials in the paper are against us. A botanist is looking at the rare plants in the marsh. I think of how Jay writes stories of his lovers in his poems. Puts in a lot. It touches me. So stubbornly courageous, or foolish,

[09:24]

to write so much about your lovers when you're a long-time married man. Then I think, what do I know about what to say, or not to say, what to tell, to whom, and when, still? Thank you. Thank you. And finally, finishing with a few poems by some other people for this section. Is Rick Fields here? Rick Fields? Are you here, Rick? Just in case? I would ask Rick's permission to read from his recent book, Fuck You, Cancer. But I don't think Rick would object to my reading it.

[10:29]

And so I'm going to read a few poems from this. Rick Fields, as I'm sure many of you know Rick, he's the editor of the Yoga Journal. He's been the editor of the Shambhala Sun. He's done good work in East Coast and West Coast and Colorado venues for years. Wonderful man. And he recently published this little book called Fuck You, Cancer. This poem is called Here We Go. There was the cough, slight, irritating, no more than trying to clear my throat of some minor obstruction. A test for tuberculosis? Negative. For ulcers? Negative. X-rays? Negative. Allergies? Negative. Tropical disease specialist? Negative. Psychics came up with disastrous, dramatic past lives. But still the cough persisted.

[11:30]

One night I dreamed there was a nail lodged in my throat. The next day, heeding the call of the unconscious, I saw an ear, nose and throat man. A dryness in the larynx, nothing more. He gave me some pills and I went off to India, reassured. On the Ghats of the Ganges in Varanasi, Shiva's city, just one hit off the chillum with the naked sadhus and my voice broke to a froggy, whispery croak. When I got back to the States, I had the hard lymph node above my collarbone taken out and biopsied, while the doctor and nurse listened and laughed at the O.J. trial on the radio. I called next Friday afternoon. I'm sorry, he said. It's not good. Here we go, I thought, as the floor disappeared beneath me. Petals for Marsha.

[12:38]

I spilled the flowers, pale pink petals. Funny, what can scare you in this world? One day, pale pink petals scattered on the table. Another day, gray black petals, three little shadows, spilled, scattered, backlit on the shiny film, there in the lower left lobe. I reached for your fingertips, pale pink petals brushed my cheek. This world, funny how in the light of death, everything shines. Varanasi, Banaras. Passing by, silver and gold sari-covered corpse.

[13:42]

Dawa, a hip 20-year-old Dharamsala girl, says to me, Tibetans say when you see dead, it's good luck. Why? Makes people pray. And May 16th, 1997. On my 55th birthday, two years to the day from my first chemotherapy, I'm still alive, against all odds, they say. To celebrate, I meditate for half a day on strange Tibetan deities, wrathful and peaceful, who rise and fall with my breath in emptiness. Later in the day, a dip in the chill Pacific, a wave lifts me up, turns me down. Then a kayak in Bolinas Lagoon,

[14:46]

seals pop up in pairs like us, curious, inquisitive, arcing, protective. Two snowy egrets stand like sentries on stilts, long necks coiled, strike like snakes, floating aimlessly, rising and falling, water flashing from the curved blades. What are the odds of me being here today? Golden sunlight, gentle breeze, green hills, drifting with the tide from the rising sea. Two Chinese poems. Everyone's Journey. No, I'm sorry. This is Japanese. This is early 16th century Japan. Everyone's journey through the world is the same.

[15:50]

So I am done with regrets. Here on the plains of Nasu, I place my trust in dew. Sogi. And here's one by Li Bo, Li Bai, or Li Bo, called Zazen on Qingting Mountain. The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains. I'll give you one more from the West, and then I'm going to move on to mountains and rivers without end. This is quoted by Borca in his Ese de Duende. Borca says,

[16:54]

Borca is talking about blood and death and poetry. Actually, he first quotes a woman poet, Lamar Bella, of the 17th century. Who, dying in childbirth on the highway, says, The blood of my entrails covers the horse, and the horse's hooves strike fire from the pitch. And then he quotes a recent young man from Salamanca, killed by a bull, who exclaimed, My friends, I'm dying. My friends, it goes badly. I've got three handkerchiefs inside me now, and this I put in makes four. The long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End

[18:10]

that I managed to finally bring out in the fall of 1956, for me, one of the most interesting and challenging parts of it is the keystone poem called The Mountains and Rivers Without End. Mountain spirit. And it's a performance piece, really, and so I'm going to perform it. That is to say, it takes a bit of chanting and a bit of voicing, and I'm still learning how to do it. The poem follows to some degree the structure of a Japanese noh drama, and it's those styles of chanting and speaking. It retells the story of the noh play, yamamba, in North American terms. The North American way to tell this story would go like this. Throughout Western North America, there are tales of mountain spirits, sometimes fierce and jagged,

[19:12]

sometimes smooth and sweet as rainbows, sometimes seen as an old ragged woman. Now, some years back in San Francisco, there was a poet who made his reputation largely on the basis of a poem that he had written about the mountain spirit, even though he had not actually visited the mountains very much himself. So one year, this poet decided to pay a visit to the unique groves of ancient bristlecone pine, the oldest living beings in the world, that are located in the remote upper elevations of the White Inyo Mountains of Eastern California. You all know where that is. After considerable travel, he made his way into the White Mountains, and he set up camp as it was getting dark. As it happened, it was also the time of the annual Perseid meteor showers, which he also hoped to enjoy. While looking out over the dusk landscape,

[20:12]

a voice came out of the dark, challenging him, and then asked him to read aloud his famous poem on the mountain spirit. It was the mountain spirit that wanted to hear the poem about her. He promised he would do that at midnight, and then he tried to put this strange encounter out of his mind. At midnight, however, he was awakened. He saw that his visitor was indeed the legendary mountain spirit. So, as the meteors streaked through the sky, he read his poem to this mysterious personage, and then the two of them danced the dance of the bristlecone pine. There are stands of bristlecone pine, Pinus longaeva, in the mountains at the western edge of the Great Basin that contain individual trees which are dated well over 4,000 years old. Those that live on the bone-white outcroppings of dolomite from the Cambrian seabeds 500 million years ago live to be the oldest.

[21:13]

They are thought to be the most ancient of living beings. Okay. So this poem tells a kind of a story and is partly chanted, partly sung, partly recited. Please relax and make yourself comfortable with the coming weirdness. Ceaseless wheel of lives

[22:20]

Ceaseless wheel of lives Red sandstone Gleaming dolomite Ceaseless wheel of lives Red sandstone And white dolomite Driving all night south from Reno Through cool-porched Bridgeport Past moan old aches pale glow Past tongues of obsidian flow stopped chill And the angled granite face Of the East Sierra front Ah! Here I am arrived in Bishop,

[23:25]

Owens Valley, called Payahunadu not so long ago. Ranger Station on Main Street. I'm a traveler. I want to know the way to the White Mountains and the Bristlecone Pines. She gives me maps. Here the trail to the grove at Timberline Where the oldest living beings Thrive on rock and air. Thank you for your help. I go to the pass. Turn north. End of day. Climbing high. Find an opening where

[24:27]

A steep dirt-side road halts A perch in the round dry hills Prickly pinyon pine boughs shade A view to the last chance range And make a camp. Nearby a rocky point. Climb it. Passing a tiny scat arrangement on a ledge Stand on a dark red sandstone strata outcrop at the edge Plane after plane of desert ridges Darkening eastward into blue-black haze A voice says You had a bit of fame

[25:35]

Once in the city For coins of mountains Here it's real. What? Yes, like the lines Walking on walking Underfoot earth turns But what do you know of minerals and stone For a creature To speak of all that scale of time What for? Still, I'd like to hear that poem. I answer back

[26:35]

Tonight is the night of the shooting stars Mirfak, the brilliant star of Perseus Crosses the ridge at midnight I'll read it then Who am I talking to, I think Walk back to camp Evening breeze up from the flats From the valleys, salt and death Venus and the new moon sink in deep blue glow Behind the palisades to the west Needle clusters shrink in the wind Listen close, the sound gets better Mountain ranges, violet haze Back fading in the east

[27:37]

Puffs of sailing, dark lit cloud A big owl's soft, swift whip Between the trees Unroll the bedding Stretch out blankets on the Crunchy dry pine needles Some warm, rosinous ground Formations dip and strike my sleep Approaching in a dream Bitter ghosts that kick their own skulls like a ball Happy ghosts that stick a flower In their old skull's empty eye Good and evil That's another stupid dream For streams and mountains Clouds and glaciers

[28:37]

Is there ever an escape? Erosion always wearing down Shearing, thrusting, deep plates crumpling Still uplifting, ice-carved cirques Dendritic, endless fractal streambed rifts on hillsides Bitter ghosts that kick their own skulls like a ball What's it all for? A meteor swift and streaking Like a tossed white pebble arching down the sky The mountain spirit stands there Old woman, white ragged hair In the glint of algol, altar, denim, sodder, altimbaran Saying, I came to hear I can't say no So I speak

[29:42]

The point, the mountain spirit Walking on walking Underfoot, earth turns Streams and mountains never stay the same Walking on walking Underfoot, earth turns Streams and mountains never stay the same Into earth rock dives As the mountains lift and open Underground out Dust over seashell Layers of ooze Display how it plays Buttresses fractured, looming, friction only soon to fall Each face a heap of risks Tale of slaves below

[30:45]

Flakes weathered off the buried block Tricked off an old pluton And settled somewhere ever lower down Gives a glimpse of streaks and strains Warp and slide A braided gritty mud-washed glide Where cliffs lean To the raven neckless sky Tricked off an old pluton And settled somewhere ever lower down Gives a glimpse of streaks and strains Warp and slide A braided gritty mud-washed glide Where cliffs lean To the raven neckless sky Calcium spiraling shells No land plants bend when Sands and stones flush down The barren flanks of magma swollen uplands Slurry to the beach Ranges into rubble

[31:46]

Old shores buried by debris A lapping trough of tight flats and lagoons Line-rich wave-washed soothing shales and silts A thousand miles of chest-deep reef Sea-bottom riffled wave-swirled Turned and tilled By squiggly slime swimmers many armed Millions of tiny different tracks Criss-crossing through the mud Trilobite winding salt sludge Calcite ridges Diatom babies drifting home Swash of quartzy sand Three hundred million years Be rolling on and then Ten million years ago An ocean floor glides like a snake

[32:50]

Between beneath the continent Crunching up old seabed Till it's high as Alps Sandstone layers Script of winding tracks And limestone shines like snow Where ancient beings grow When the axe strokes stop The silence grows deeper Peaks like Buddhas at the heights Send waters streaming down To the deep center of the turning world And the mountain spirit always wandering Hillsides fade like walls of cloud

[33:50]

Pebbles smoothed off sloshing in the sea Old woman mountain hears Shifting sand tell the wind Nothingness is shapeliness Mountains will be Buddhas Then when bristlecone needles are green Scarlet enstemon flowers are red Mountains feed the people too Stories from the past Of pine nut gathering baskets quickly full Of help at grinding, carrying, healing Ghosts of lost landscapes Herds and flocks Towns and clans Great teachers from all lands

[34:52]

Tucked in Wovoka's empty hat Stored in baby Krishna's mouth Kneeling for tea In Vimala Kirti's one small room Goose flocks Crane flocks Lake Lahontan Come again Walking on walking Underfoot earth turns The mountain spirit whispers back All art and song Is sacred to the real As such

[35:54]

Bristlecone pines live long On the taste of carbonate, dolomite Spiraled, standing, coiling Dead wood with the living Four thousand years of mineral glimmer Spaced out growing in the icy, scary sky White bones under summer stars The mountain spirit and me Like ripples of the Cangrian sea Dance the pine tree Old arms, old limbs Twisting, twining Scatter cones across the ground Stamp the root foot down And then she's gone Ceaseless wheel of lives

[36:59]

Red sandstone and white dolomite A few more shooting stars Back to the bedroll Sleep till dawn Okay, I'm going to finish with one more poem. Thank you. [...] Thank you very much. You know, you guys are getting off easy tonight. You know, I learned how to read poetry in India. In North India. And, you know, four or five hours is what I consider normal. This last poem is the most recent poem I've written.

[38:03]

I guess it's the most recent. I haven't read this one in public except to a few friends up in the mountains. In fact, when I wrote it, I thought, this is not a poem I'll ever read to anybody else. Except people, you know, the locals. But what the heck. It's called The Summer of 97. We built an addition onto our house this summer. At the same time that my wife, Carol, who is wrestling with a very rare and complicated kind of cancer, had to go into a very drastic surgery in Washington, D.C. And she was gone for a good part of the summer. And then came back just when this thing was finished. Or almost finished. And so she comes into the story, too. So this is called The Summer of 97. It's written in a form that I call dogger roll. You'll see what I mean. West of the square old house.

[39:07]

On the rise that was made when the pond was dug. Where we used to sleep out. Where the trampoline used to sit. Earth spirit, please don't mind. If cement trucks grind. And plant spirits, wait a while. Please come back and smile. Ditches, lines and drains. Forms and pores and hidden doors. The house begins. Sun for power. Cedar for sighting. Fresh skin poles for framing. Gravel for crunching. And Bollingen for bucks. Daniel peeling. Moth for singing. Matt for pounding. Bruce for pondering. Chuck for plumbering. David drywalling. Staining. Crawling. Stew for drain rock. Kurt for hot wire. Gary for cold beer. Carol for brave laugh.

[40:08]

Till she leaves. Crew grieves. Gin for painting each window frame. Gin red again. Garden cucumbers for lunch. Fresh tomatoes crunch. Tor for indoor paints and grins. Ted for roof tiles. Tar paper curls. Sawdust swirls. Trucks for hauling. Barrels for burning. Old bedrooms disappearing. Wild turkeys watching. Deer disdainful. Bullfrogs croaking. David parmenter for bringing flooring oak at night. Though his mill burns down, he's still coming round. Cindra tracing manzanita on the tile wall shower. Sliding doors. Smooth new floors. Old house, a big hall now. Big as a stable. To bang the meat stein on the table. Robin got a room to write a poem. And no more nights out walking to the john. Got indoor plumbing two years

[41:09]

before the end of the 20th century. Carol finally coming home. Peeking at her many rooms. Oak and pine trees looking on. Old kit-kit dizzy house now. Has another wing. So we'll pour a glass and sing. This has been fun as heaven. Summer of 97. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, folks.

[42:14]

Oh, wait a minute. I said I was going to answer questions. That's right. I said I would answer questions for a few minutes. Back to work. I won't keep you long, but if anybody would like to raise a point or two, we'll do it. Some of that stuff about the 50th millennium. That's why some of my friends and I call this year that you guys call 1998, we call it 49,998. Now two more years to the 50th millennium. Well, shoot. I'll let you go home. Oh, okay. Do you feel that Zen has evolved the way you expected it to back in the 50s and 60s? That what? Zen and Buddhism and the whole evolution of Eastern culture has evolved the way you expected it to? I don't know what I expected. Yeah, I guess so. What's the biggest surprise?

[43:28]

Well, I hate to say it, but the biggest surprise, and I shouldn't have been surprised, is how a certain number, a certain corner, certain territories of American, that is to say, white American Buddhists sort of end up sounding like Protestants. I shouldn't be surprised, though. We will work through that, too. We've got a lot of time ahead of us. Anybody else? Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. I can't understand what you're singing. Yeah. From your point of view, what you guys sort of brought up when you came through this era.

[44:34]

Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, I heard that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. My name is A. Locke. Would you have a minute to ask him if he's available? I don't think you're available. Hmm? Oh, yeah. You know, but he's going so fast there sometimes

[45:44]

with those lines of poetry. Boy, I figure he's just making it up. Okay. One more. Oh, I'll leave that to the scholars of the future to figure out. It has its points of intersection, and also it's very different. It could be, you know, in somebody's sort of no-drama hands, it could be made virtually into a no-drama, but that's really not my intention. My intention is to push it out someplace else, but to borrow some of the conventions and some of the dramatic strategies of no-drama, which I admire as one of the most perfect dramatic forms in the world. And it is a poetic-dramatic form. That is to say, most of the text is poetry in no.

[46:45]

So it's a wonderful form. I just love watching it. Over there? Yeah. How do you feel about growing old? How do you feel about growing old? How do I feel about growing old? Well, I do notice it sometimes. Although I didn't notice it until about four or five years ago, and then I started getting aches in my shoulders. And, you know, what is it? Arthritis when you get older? There's little things that come along. You know, you learn that you figure out you've got to adapt once in a while. But then when you learn to adapt, you just do other things. I'm saving Europe for my old age. As long as I can keep going out in Alaska or out sea kayaking or moving out in the mountains. I'll keep going out in the mountains. Then I'll be ready for culture when I'm in a wheelchair and they can wheel me around out in museums. Yeah, way back there.

[47:53]

The point of what? What was the last phrase? The point of mindfulness is that you pay attention. I don't know. That's the answer to your question. The whole thing. Yeah. I'll take one more and let you folks go. Yes, the young lady. Are you talking about cave art? Yeah. Oh, I am so deeply moved by cave art.

[49:02]

And it's such a puzzle. You come up against a wall where you know that there's never going to be any answers to some of these questions. And so then it becomes really a place to meditate. Really. And the most frustrating thing about visiting the caves in France, most of them, they won't let you stay in them very long. I would have to, and I've talked about this with Clayton Eshelman, you'd have to get some special permission, which isn't easy to get, from the French Bureau of Archaeology to be allowed to go and spend 24 hours or 48 hours in some of these caves using instead of electric lights, say, candles, so you would get the light on the walls that was there when they painted them. And you could see them as they were probably, quote, intended to be seen, but also to feel the space, feel the temperature, which is cool, the dampness,

[50:05]

and to try to put yourself somewhere toward the mind that painted them at the time they were painted. The next step in understanding and appreciating cave art is going to have to be living with them and living that way in the caves a little bit, and nobody is allowed to do it at the moment. So that's kind of frustrating. Without having to go to France or Europe, you know there is a remarkable array of petroglyph and pictographic art here in North America. It's actually all over the place if you are careful and know where to look. And we don't always talk about it too much because there is a lot of vandalism on it, too. But one can, you know, indulge one's interest in rock art speculation and rock art visiting right here in North America, wonderfully, right here in California, without going very far. And this is like a planetary, it's a planetary treasure

[51:06]

because rock art is found on every continent. It's a planetary treasure full of images and graphs and graphics that are suggestive to us and we don't know how or why. So there is some touching base there with something very archaic in human nature that some of us are working at. And so I call that, for lack of a better word, the ancient Buddha. There are some great sutras about the ancient Buddha. Okay. Thank you very much, folks. Applause [...]

[52:07]

Applause [...]

[52:29]

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