Floating City VI

Last Year in Marienbad-Alain Renais 1961

This outer dazzling radiance
Imbues with melting desire
Refracting in stained glass
Shines over frothing waves
Casts over sundial shadows
Haloes the heroic statuary
Banished within four walls
Where silence, solitude reign
Realm of inner marvels

Floating City III

Vittore Carpaccio-The Lion of St. Mark 1516

The souls encased within the stone of statues,
Chimerical monsters, phantasmagorical creations, heraldic beasts,
Slowly exhale, stir sleepily, vividly animate, move rapidly,
Alight off the columns,
Descend from church alcoves,
Climb down from rooftops
To roam through the squares, palazzos and streets
Which they have always dominated symbolically
But now is the time to colonize the city concretely.

Myriad Things

Wei Ligang-Myriad Things Examined: Autumn-2016

In the primal chaos
Before
Time and things

A split second
Of stillness
Silence

Condensing into a point
Almost disappearing
Smaller than a drifting speck

Of dust
Yet somehow vaster
Than all dimensions

Rushing to fill
The remaining real estate
This is the one

The way
Tao
This is the only

All opposites reconciled
All contradictions resolved
A magistry beyond measure

The integral harmony
Unity in its perfection
Desired multiplicity

Engendering the two
Who fought and loved
Birthing the three

That emanated
All the myriad things
Beneath Heaven

A floating world
Of impermanence
Fleeting phantasies

Transitory thoughts
Nothing so-of-itself
Yet longing for ideal
A oneness yet undivided

Dust

Hokusai-The Tengu Goddess, Mystical Bird 1760

For a few seconds a stray sunbeam
Makes visible the dance of dust motes
Swaying, trembling, swooning then falling
I have been granted a glimpse
Of harmony in the floating world
For the moment I am deeply content
Eyelids heavy, chin dropping towards chest
I dream of angels in a distant Heaven
Languidly embracing in the shallows
Of a limpidly becalmed pool.

Empire of Light

Rene Magritte-L’empire des lumières

Incising memory

Of exorcised desire

Upon the crest

Surveying an Empire of Light

Superimposed upon the mazy suburban grid

Etched in bold relief against the satin backdrop

Myriad glowing grains

Reflections of the larger part of a broken China plate

I was told without a shadow

That this was the way back

The path home

But everything here is unfamiliar and strange

I must have misheard or been misled

I have to return to the starting point

Follow the road to within

The only sure course to reach the wider realm without