This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everybody. Nice to see you all today. Hi guys. Look at you, sitting so quietly. Wonderful. I detect a few elderly children also in the front.

[01:02]

Wind on the hill. Nobody can tell me. And nobody knows. where the wind comes from and where the wind goes. It's flying from somewhere as fast as it can. I couldn't keep up with it, even if I ran. But if I stopped holding the string of my kite, it would blow with the wind for a day and a night. And then when I found it, wherever it blew, I should know that the wind had been going there too. So then I could tell them where the wind goes. But where the wind comes from, nobody knows. Sneezels. You ever have sneezels?

[02:09]

Sneezels. Right? You've had them? Sneezels. Yeah, right? Ridiculous. Sneasels. Christopher Robin had weasels and sneezels. They bundled him into his bed. They gave him what goes with a cold in the nose and some more for a cold in the head. They wondered if weasels could turn into measles, if sneezels would turn into mumps. They examined his chest for a rash and the rest of his body for swellings and lumps. They sent for some doctors in Sneasels and Weasels to tell them what ought to be done. All sorts of conditions of famous physicians came hurrying around at a run. They all made a note of the state of his throat.

[03:14]

They asked if he suffered from thirst. They asked if the sneezels came after the weasels or if the first sneezel came first. They said, if you teasel a sneezel or a weasel, a measel may easily grow. But humor or pleasel the weasel or sneezel, the measel will certainly go. They expounded the weasels, for sneezels and weasels, the manner of measles when new. And they said, if he freezels in drafts and in breezels, then ffeezels may even ensue. Christopher Robin got up in the morning, the sneezels had vanished away, and the look in his eye seemed to say to the sky, no,

[04:17]

how to amuse them today. What funny? Yeah, really funny. Buckingham Palace. It's a big palace in England, in London, England. That's where the queen lives, right? But in the days when this poem was written, I think there was a king of England, not a queen. Buckingham Palace. They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Alice is marrying one of the guard. A soldier's life is terribly hard, says Alice. They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard in a sentry box. One of the sergeants looks after their socks, says Alice.

[05:20]

They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We looked for the king, but he never came. Well, God take care of him all of the same, said Alice. They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. They've got great big parties inside the grounds. I wouldn't be king for a hundred pounds, says... Who? Yeah, Alice. They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. A face looked out, but it wasn't the king's. He's much too busy assigning things, says Alice. They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Do you think the king knows all about me? Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea, says Alice.

[06:22]

Happiness. John had great big waterproof boots on. John had a great big waterproof hat. John had a great big waterproof Macintosh. And that, said John, is that. Codleston Pie. And this is the last one. Okay, you ready for this one? You know these poems, right? You've heard these poems before. I hope so. You've never heard them before? Really? How could that be? Codleston Pie. Codleston, Codleston, Codleston Pie. A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. Did you ever think of that? A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. True, right?

[07:24]

You'd think that a fly could bird. If a bird could fly, why can't a fly bird? Yeah, well, I know. What's a bird? I've seen birds, haven't you? Yeah, right. So we know what a bird is, but what does it mean? That's the whole thing. We don't know what it means. That's the whole thing. Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston pie, a fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply, Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston pie. Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston pie, why does it chicken? I don't know why. Ask me a riddle and I reply, Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston pie. Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston, that's hard to say that. Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston pie. A fish can't whistle, and neither can I. Ask me a riddle, and I reply, Coddleston, Coddleston pie.

[08:32]

Okay, the end. Thank you, guys. Yay. Now you have to all disappear, right? Children's program over there. Yeah, thank you. What's that? Not Shel Silverstein, no. These are A. A. Milne. A. A. Milne. The one who wrote Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. Same guy. I like the Kneezle one. The Sneezles and Measles is a good one, isn't it? Yeah, it is a good one. So funny. So funny, yeah, really funny. Totally funny. Bye, guys. Wow. Red hair. Totally. Really red. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. So as you can all see, today is poetry day.

[09:42]

We're going to do poetry today. Now, so I'm going to read some poems for you today, and I have no expectation that these poems will do you any good at all. And I suspect they won't do you any good at all. But I read them anyway. I think it's still worthwhile. I don't know that poems are supposed to do you any good. Probably when you were in school, they told you that poems are... really do you a lot of good and that they have meanings in them that you could sleuth out if you could like decipher beyond the obscurity of the poem's language the real meaning that was already in the poem but I think that it's the opposite if poems did do you any good it would be because they transcend meaning

[10:45]

or maybe they even muddle up meaning. One of the main teachings in Zen, people don't ever think about this, but really Zen teachings, and not only Zen, but Mahayana Buddhist teachings, have a lot to do with language and meaning, and the status and the spiritual position of language and meaning. And in a word, Zen teachings and Mayana teachings tell us that language and meaning is highly overrated. And that words may not mean what they seem to mean. It may be that our strong grip on meaning is one of the main ways we have of causing ourselves suffering and making other people suffer. So we should have a looser sense of meaning we should recognize that meaning is a kind of tyranny, an ideology with which we can oppress ourselves and others.

[11:56]

It's not that we are trying to get rid of meaning, because we can't do that. But we have to learn how to hold meaning lightly. And this is my idea of what a poem is supposed to do. Loosen our grip on meaning. Codleston, Codleston, pie. A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. What does that mean? So I'll read you some poems of mine and some other people, too. This is a poem from my book called Slowly But Dearly. This poem is called Another Planet. In tall grasses we are thinking... of what we are in sunshine, wondering where we came from among flowers, listening to sounds of birds, black birds, trilling lasciviously, extending themselves toward us beside the pond. We are dutifully imagining what our life will be like after we are dead.

[13:03]

and will have no wish to think or feel or worry about anything anymore. In the sky, we fondly speculate about dear, loved ones who are lost far away, probably also looking for us among the tall grasses of our displaced thinking. We who are still thinking beside the pond as the frogs croak and the cicadas shriek and the owls strangely because it is day hoot as they never have before under the clouds in the trees whose branches are knocking together in the breeze among the shade of the trees beside the creek winding by where the willows are gesturing flagrantly a new bud we are calculating how we'll spend our remaining days our lifetime storehouse of gathered information and music sensation and grief How strange that in these purported places we mimic a colorful life we've never lived, worry about a determining death we'll never die, scheme out desires we'll never fulfill, sighs we'll never sigh, loves we'll never love, and dreams too painfully real for our impassioned slumbers.

[14:09]

There's a pair of poems in this volume called Ingrown and Outgrown. And I'll read you Outgrown. Problem needs to clarify the problem. Person needs to please the problem. Maybe not things. Just like life. Don't let it disturb you. Problems that urge obligation yet escape concrete statement. Persons needing things. Maybe not. Just life. A big problem. like a person is a problem for death to think about. Is also to please them frozen, guilty, important, permanent. How it bothers you across the winds of the page as a person with a big problem, a wind of renunciation. To clarify that person, to please him, become famous in...

[15:16]

the things that were still known, actually broad and free, in them, actually left in a place, renunciation, not pleasing, in him, just life, what it does always, just a way of thinking about it, quirky, broad, and free death, forgetting about the person, what he did, maybe not things, maybe forgotten, broadly festering a freedom for it, not disturbing or afraid, frozen probably, important, permanent, which is a lie, the person clarified in it, in there as a page missing just in the life which is the same as death, meaning something that is all right, big problems, big famous clarifications, big frozen guilty, not in rules, very disturbing, but in promises, very outspoken, I always say, clarify that person.

[16:17]

Find out where his feet are. Let him walk on ahead. Clarify the problem. Find form for and and what's given. To give the person to it is to please, unfreeze the problem. But there's always the problem. some short poems in the same volume. What a wonderful world, from the song Louis Armstrong, 8th famous. What a wonderful world. What seems separate, weighty, out there, is actually already dissolved because the moving into it is a giving up of everything that has already been lost anyway, so it's easy to do.

[17:20]

Everything works together, even griefs. Nothing more clever than the mind to tangle things up in, without which we couldn't ever do or even ever appear. Responsibility. Tonight it's quiet, or in the quiet, or at least the quiet is all around us. What is it I'm worried about when I worry about anything? What is it I tangle up in wanting to go home? From down here, I look up at myself in the little bright square of window, staring down at me in bemusement. querying what's it worth. But that's a question snaps shut on itself. Thoughts with teeth and claws to scrape away to the very core.

[18:28]

What cares contains its value. A half-life mixed, no doubt, yet fair. It's always fair, or anyway, it's always what's there. And it's not our life. fault. How God gets into it. God arrives in the transitions, the times between before and after, the shatterings, bendings, breakings, moments of devilment and blasted pose. The feeling then arises, a draft in the system, tiny shaft of light in the visual field which when noticed and affirmed, opens out to an aura on the screen of eclectic ineffability. One's arms open in quietude and perplexity.

[19:29]

There's nothing to say, do, or think. I've changed. I've changed, shrunk, probably noticing the prominence of my skeleton this world sorry this word I wanted to fondle that I threw out into the world that never had a meaning or a referent except to stand for all I do not know and fear Now I can feel what it wanted to tell me. Now I'd like to read you a poem of William Carlos Williams, which recently, I haven't read Williams in a long time, but recently this poem came to my mind because I was in Brooklyn.

[20:44]

I spent a lot of time in Brooklyn. because my children and grandchildren live there, and we were responsible for our grandchildren. People in Brooklyn, you know, have very complicated lives, very complicated. And when you have children, they have to go to skateboard lessons and swimming class, and then one of the parents is in Bolivia, and the other one is in Washington, D.C., doing some legal case So if you're a grandparent of these children, you're very busy. So I was very busy in Brooklyn, and my wife was having one of the grandchildren over here, and I had to rush to the house of the other one because the nanny was... and so forth and so on. And I was very happy to have a moment's peace, a long walk between the one grandchild and the other grandchild. I was all by myself. It was wonderful.

[21:44]

And I noticed... all the sparrows on the street. You know, the sparrows are everywhere, and they're so great, sparrows. Irrepressible. And then I thought, I remember that great poem of Williams about the sparrow. And you know, we live in these wonderful times when, if you have a thought like that, all you have to do is take out your telephone and type in William Carlos Williams, the sparrow. And there it is. The poem is right there. And you could stop on the street and read the poem. It's a great poem. So here it is, The Sparrow. This sparrow, who comes to sit at my window, is a poetic truth more than a natural one. His voice, his movements, his habits, how he loves to flutter his wings in the dust. I'll attest it. Granted, he does it to rid himself of lice, but the relief he feels makes him cry out lustily, which is a trait more related to music than otherwise.

[22:59]

Whenever he finds himself in early spring on back streets or beside palaces, he carries on unaffectedly his amours. It begins in the egg. His sex genders it. What is more pretentiously useless or about which we more pride ourselves? It leads, as often as not, to our undoings. Dr. Williams was a famous philanderer, so he had a lot of suffering over this. By the way, how does he know it's a male sparrow, right? Is he that knowledgeable? He can tell the difference? The cockerel, the crow... with their challenging voices, cannot surpass the insistence of his cheap. Once, at El Paso, toward evening, I saw and heard 10,000 sparrows who had come in from the desert to roost.

[24:02]

They filled the trees of a small park. Men fled with ears ringing from their droppings, leaving the premises to the alligators who inhabit the fountain. His image is familiar as that of the aristocratic unicorn, a pity there are not more oats eaten nowadays to make living easier for him. At that, his small size, keen eyes, serviceable beak, and general truculence assure his survival, to say nothing of his innumerable brood. Even the Japanese know him and have painted him sympathetically with profound insight into his minor characteristics. Nothing even remotely subtle about his lovemaking. He crouches before the female, drags his wings, waltzing, throws back his head and simply yells.

[25:03]

The din is terrific. The way he swipes his bill across a plank to clean it is decisive. So with everything he does. His coppery eyebrows give him the air of being always a winner, and yet I saw once the female of his species clinging determinedly to the edge of a water pipe catch him by his crown feathers to hold him silent, subdued, hanging above the city streets until she was through with him. What was the use of that? She hung there herself, puzzled at her success. I laughed heartily. Practical to the end, it is the poem of his existence that triumphed finally.

[26:04]

A wisp of feathers flattened to the pavement, wings spread symmetrically as if in flight, the head gone the black escutcheon of the breast, undecipherable, an effigy of a sparrow, a dried wafer only, left to say, and it says it without offense, beautifully, this was I, a sparrow. I did my best. Farewell. I want that on my yes. Right? Wouldn't that be good for all of us? This was I, a sparrow. I did my best. Farewell. For me, like, sparrows are the image of a bodhisattva. Completely unstoppable. They just keep going. Always busy, always doing something.

[27:07]

Trying to help. And then, this was I, a sparrow. I did my best. Farewell. So I'm going to read you a few poems from this book. These are old books of mine. But I was perusing them the other day, and I thought, boy, that's not so bad. Is it pretty good? This is from a book called Success. You might wonder, like, why would I write a book of poems called Success? Are you wondering? Not really, but if you were wondering, the answer to that would be... that in the last months of his life, my father came to visit us here at Green Gulch. That's how long ago I wrote these poems. And he brought me a little present, a bright red diary, you know, like those diaries you write in. This was before you could have, like, iPhone calendars and stuff.

[28:09]

And it had 28 lines a day, and it had the day of every day of the year. with 28 blank lines, so you could write in your appointments and so on. It was like for your desk. And I decided I would write 28 lines a day for the calendar year, each poem on each day of this diary. And on the front, the diary said, Success. That was the name of the company that made the diary, Success Diary Company, so you could be successful in your business endeavors. So the name of the book is Success. I gave a poetry reading while I was writing this, you know, in the middle of it. I gave a poetry reading at San Jose. And huge numbers of people came. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. Huge. Perhaps the fact that I was meeting with Gary Snyder that evening had something to do with the fact that such large numbers of people came.

[29:11]

I'm not sure, but that's possible. But anyway, a really big audience. And so I read some of these poems at that poetry reading. You know, they were still in progress. And some guy, after the reading, came rushing up to me and explained to me what a brilliant thing that I had done to choose 28-line poems, a double sonnet. It was brilliant. And this poem is about that. The title is the date. Saturday, 24 March. A wave or... Regarding Wave, our titles of books of poets I know, great poets, driving up from San Jose, freeway like a wave, little blinking lights of cars, waves dimpling on a stony shore. It is no accident that I am writing 28 lines a day. According to Peter, Chinese microbiologist, who points out 28 days is the moon cycle,

[30:14]

and the menstrual cycle. And it is a perfect number. The only one with two digits, which means that the total of all its divisors, when you add them up, equals 28. And not only that, it is the atomic weight of the nitrogen molecule, which makes up over 70% of the atmosphere we and everything else breathe. 28 is certainly not an accident. And like everything else in my life, the choice of 28 lines for these poems is acutely calculated, deviously well thought through, and incandescently brilliant. It takes years to come up with something this good. A perfect wave. Friday, 5th October.

[31:17]

Press enter in order to continue. Press escape in order to change into something else. Press known in order to freeze fluid in the system and to bleed the system of fluid. Press unknown. Consider generating occasions of fact. as considerations of cloud cover or fog, but relax in the mist and rain of the presence of simply nothing as that, specific of what can be counted on with faith in nothing, which is certainly a particularly lively sort of faith. There is random and directed thinking coming and going, perhaps somewhere, yet Thinking has nothing it needs to do in that case other than to enjoy itself and purify the ground, making it smoother so people don't trip so much and accidentally smash into one another, causing an endless chain of trouble.

[32:35]

It often would have, on a certain day, would say like October 31st, Halloween, April 15th, Tax Day, and often those things would figure into the poems. So this one is Wednesday, 31st, October. Halloween. Reformation Day. Social Security and Withholding Tax Return Due. First Day of Rain. Day the banks all fail to coagulate money. Hard of hearing day. Hat day. Hot day during which sleep is impossible. Consideration of limits of the universe day. Day after which there is no further day. The day the earth stood still. Hopeless, foolish, downhearted day of no accomplishment. All these are capitalized because these are special days of the year, right?

[33:46]

Another day for thinking of all the things we want, we are not getting day. Day to consider the future. Day to invoke deities of duty and of simplicity and action. National bad back day. Universal harmony day in the Middle East. Single day of happiness for all mammals. senseless day of non-thinking violence, wholehearted day of prayer for what ails us, international feline Red Cross Day, day to celebrate all wrecks at sea, bliss day, thuds day, moon day, blur day, blue day, suds day, bothers day, barf day, anchor day. Then somebody sent me a picture of my wife and I, like 40 years ago or something like that, when we were young and we had our little children.

[35:05]

And so I sent this, you know, texted this photograph to one of my sons and said, who then sent me back a few lines of poetry. And I said, this is terrible poetry. And then I thought to myself, where did this come from? So I looked it up. It turns out it's from a poem by Ezra Pound called Song in the Manner of A.E. Houseman. And no wonder they were terrible lines of poetry because it was a parody of A.E. Houseman. Pound is parodying A.E. Houseman. So then I looked up A.E. Houseman and spent half a day reading The Shropshire Lad, which is A.E. Houseman's famous work. And it's very depressing. It's like poems about country people in early 20th century or late 19th century in this little town, little area, county in England.

[36:06]

And we think of country life as being so wonderful. But all the people in Shropshire Ladder, kind of depressed. There's always something terrible. You don't know exactly what it is, but everybody's always depressed. Life is short. We're all going to die and all this. So now, Ezra Pound writes this poem, Song in the Manner of A.E. Houseman. Oh, whoa, whoa. People are born and die. We shall also be dead pretty soon. Therefore, let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree, but he dies also presently. Oh, hi, guys. Just in the middle of a poem. Please sit down. I'll start over again for you. This is a poem of Ezra Pound. It's kind of a parody of a poem, a poetry of A. E. Haussmann.

[37:12]

You ready? Oh, whoa, oh, whoa. People are born and die. We also shall be dead pretty soon. Therefore, let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree, but he dies also presently. Some lads get hung and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Whoa, whoa, et cetera, et cetera. London is a woeful place. Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, woe, oh, woe, woe, et cetera, et cetera. Those are pretty funny. Okay, so here's a few poems from...

[38:16]

my book I was blown back I one of my I can't figure out how to write poetry so every time I finish a book I think that's it that's the end and then I think well but maybe you could do it this way and then I think of another way of doing it and then I do it that way and then another book comes and I have to start all over again every time So all my books are quite different, one from the other, although probably you can detect a thread that runs through it. But this poem caught my eye because it's a poem in memory of a dear friend, Maylee Scott. I bet you most of you don't know Maylee Scott. But Maylee, my wife Kathy, when she was a young student at the University of Berkeley,

[39:19]

California, at Berkeley, she worked for Maile Scott as her, like, living in her house, helping her family, you know, as a way of having a place to live when she was a student. And my wife was a Zen student, and she would go to the Zendo all the time, and Maile Scott said, oh, that's interesting. And Maile Scott started going to the Zendo. This is in Berkeley. And to make a long story short, Maile Scott became a Zen priest, and Zen teacher, and she was one of our great Zen teachers. She was a wonderful person, very committed to justice, social justice, as a Zen path. And she became, you know, very important in the Zen movement, and sadly was ill. We had cancer and died at a young age, you know, early 60s, and so it's a shame that we lost Meili. We loved Meili a lot and knew her for all those years. So this is a poem in memory for her.

[40:23]

Slipped away as memory all over again. You're here. A breath in, then last out. Final crown of a lifetime's utter truth. in being a person upright and tall, noble and definite in speech, never without a passion for what's right, for the hopeless, possible, good enough world that exists in our dreams, living and dying for that. Dear Meili, This is one more short poem from I Was Blown Back.

[41:25]

Place is code. Perception collapses. The whole heart stops. The poor world shatters on a dime. You make it so. Snap the thread. Weep for the red. Release. the unsaid, we've always been dead, we just need a little honey to get by on. So this, I was blown back, a very serious book, very serious. I lost my sense of humor in this book. But now I want to read you, my last offering here is from this book, just came out this year. It's called Any Would Be If. And even though it just came out this year, actually I wrote these poems mostly when I was living here at Green Goats long ago.

[42:29]

This happens sometimes. You have a manuscript, at least it happens to me, you have a manuscript, it's laying around somewhere in a drawer, you totally forgot all about it, and then something happens, some slip-up occurs, and somehow or other, 25 years later it gets published. How it happens, you don't even know. Here it is. And the thing about it, did I say this? It's one-line poems. Only one line long. Maybe a thousand of them. It's a 135-page book with four, five, six, ten poems on a page. What's fun about it is in order to read it and make clear that they're one-line poems, I have to have silence, right? Because if I just read it one after the other, you wouldn't know they were one-line poems. So I'll read them I'll just randomly select some and read them one line at a time. Seepage around toilet's foot.

[43:36]

I misunderstand you, too. This one can always be taken out later. The mind, like a tear, flows. probably, vastly, exactly. Look, because, leap.

[44:56]

Leaf, lying on a leaf full belly tonight and others Cedar Chest, taken to college, 1906. I have one, so want more. Crickets hidden and heard.

[46:09]

Parent capacity for sleep. Appear. Appear. Perfect. Dog scratches. wants in dog in words cut both ways canister barrister canine barroom.

[47:21]

I am, oh no! I like that one. You work at, so to speak. Do not enter. My mother-in-law thought my talk contained pearls of wisdom and food for thought. should end this with a period, comma.

[48:41]

Once, in quotation marks, once there was a time in quotation marks. I doubt it. What makes a poem? Intensity. Bucket of dear laundry, the sound of shovels. Real life ends here. Such perfect things.

[50:08]

Look slowly, powerfully, and long. From the top, a long view. Cat in drawer. Shine bright Crabapple blossom. To think I am getting paid for this.

[51:22]

Can't know how to do this. Fortunately, you pass out. I am like alive. I am like alive. How he did, he did okay. Silence is better than the words, right?

[52:32]

Nice. Cat asleep on pants. dawn surprisingly it as do be it he me or sound of someone long gone just because I know you're in suspense.

[53:49]

I'll read the last one for you, just to relieve the tension of wondering where all this is going. And a lot of them, you have to see them on the page because they have punctuation that's important. This one, has two asterisks before and after each phrase. So I just have to tell you that. You can't see it. Then I'll read it for you. Open mouth, close door, speak, stay warm. So I will conclude with a short poem of the greatest religious poet of all time. Hands down. Emily Dickinson. Wonderful poet. If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

[55:00]

If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again I shall not live in vain. So, I appreciate your indulging me today. When I thought of reading the A. A. Milne poems for the kids, I thought, well, why not just keep going with poetry? Besides, I really couldn't think of anything else So there you go. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[56:09]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[56:21]

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