“Good and Evil have not yet set up shop” – Three poems by John Copley Alter
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry by John Copley Alter: ‘a blue heron meditates on water / Between his still rapture and this place you / and I are more than tourists’
Reading Whitman on the Chakkar
I moisten the roots
Watering can in hand Adam wanders
paradise. Good and evil have not yet
set up shop, and many of the residents
await their being named, unaware in
many instances that such names matter.
California poppy, the Sukkot
paraphernalia, whatever plants
greeted Ram and Sita—none of this news
has yet broken. Adam waters without
scruple or discretion, the weed unknown,
wandering paradise, considering
what names in what tongue—bemused,
distracted,
keeping a tally, an account.
the chant of dilation
We have had ducking & deprecating
about enough. Dilate your pupils,
the new pedagogy. He waits patiently
for even a slight breeze to stir his sails.
Psychoanalysis does not do
the same trick for him it did for some
of the others on the bus with him,
vomit dried outside the window. They
found
the ruined snake temple suggestive,
they danced and chanted and the moon
with them
the hot springs, the mountains threatening
dilation…
the poet of the woman
The poet of the woman
the milkmaids staggering home
Such a sweet music,
man and woman.
Mirabai, the poet of woman,
sings of delirium,
how the blue music bewitched &
beguiled. She crouches in the ashes.
Pacing the narrow brittle beach,
her lyric confronting Odysseus,
Sappho,
the poet of woman.
But you mean otherwise. You speak of
something else,
of fluidity
of completion,
a curse of sorts lifted,
Anthony and Cleopatra.
The milkmaids stagger home.
why should I not speak to you?
You are on a solitary hike
and meet
another solitary
hiker
at a spring or crossing
a narrow bridge. It has been
several new moons. You lift off
your rucksack—what it contains you
have forgotten—and on the fragile bench
sit down together,
looking out at
a river, two raptors soaring
on the other side
a village perhaps, there is smoke rising.
You sit in a comfortable silence.
Stories will follow, an account.
its wild ascending lisp
Do you remember, my brother
somewhere near Shalimar the woodworker
there was a stream I think
and a border of willows a field of
mustard growing and the man working
the wood surrounded by fragrant shavings
the wild ascending lisp of his plane
we did not imagine terror then
we did not know terror
we paused and our father asked something
and the woodworker laughed
there was a stream I think and willows
weeping
the hints
Translating the hints is a lifelong work.
What are the trees saying to my window?
I take the postcard the mountains sent me
once—valley and ridge—and consider it.
*
Lowest of the angels
Lowest of the angels a blue heron
meditates and you and I become still
Vespers the chanting river chuckles rock
music fills this small place Lowest angel
a blue heron meditates on water
Between his still rapture and this place you
and I are more than tourists become still
Presiding the blue heron meditates
on water rock music fills our still minds
& the thoughts of the blue heron flow through
us into this valley together we
create to paradise this simple path
leads past the sentinel we walk on rocks
& water through the heron’s watchful mind
~
The dervish bathes in cold fresh water careful
not to disturb the blue
heron. The blue
heron stands in rapt
attention, lowest
of the archangels. Do not disturb the sleeping
child of today the heron silently informs the
neighbourhood. The blue
the watercolorist picks from their
priceless collection will delight the child of today.
The blue the watercolorist picks from their
collection
is the color of the annunciation. Who is this
watercolorist?
~
She meditates at noon beside still
waters where a blue heron
lowest of the archangels also stands
vigilant as if an artist
commissioned by the universe had
carefully composed them there, the bird
the lovely young mother, the breeze
ruffling still water, & a canoe
drifting & on the far shore
rising up into the eastern sky
a mountain. She holds them each
in her regard. Mountain, shore, sky,
drifting canoe,
her meditation.
*
Behold
behold, it was very good
the windows are enjoying their respite
from clairvoyance plastered with wet leaves
and streaked with rain they look back at me
with the question should we let this weather
in
the peonies in the pavilion
water lilies
the leaves of summer grass
the monsoon outside my mother’s womb
a good question
the windows meanwhile relieved of their
humdrum obligations become almost
stained glass
raindrops a mosaic
plastered leaves
~
You are welcome of course to the bamboo
forest the way the pavilion welcomes
the peonies the way water lilies welcome
the rain the way a canvas welcomes
the painter’s brush the way silence welcomes
Stravinski you are welcome
it goes without saying the way a wall
welcomes windows
you are welcome
the way the trees hold up their empty
begging bowls to the rain falling in
the bamboo forest
you are welcome
~
The lectionary for today is written
in water it is rain that opens the psalms
to where David is dancing in puddles
in his bright rubber boots
you know the text
you read it the way in your garden
the peonies read today’s weather
it is rain that reads in the gospel
how Jesus walks on water skateboards
down the streaks of rain you know the text
it swaddled you once
rainy weather
~
Why listen then to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir
on a rainy day in Shanghai? You listen
for your friends,
you listen for the streets of a city you shared
once, for the windows of a bar
on a street in a city you shared once.
It is 1971 after all, again, on the sharp edge
of a time you did not know would become
this, listening to Led Zeppelin’s remastered
Kashmir in Shanghai, later.
***
John Copley Alter was born in Landour in August 1947 and studied and taught at the Woodstock School. Currently, he is retired and lives with his wife in Shanghai.
