—

Disappointed Hummingbird

quasi-haiku and other short form poems of Benjamin Suzuki

compiled by Kendal Q. Binmore

part 4

—

Suzuki poems

—

 

we walk

on struggled existence

that cannot cry out

—

vast plane of nonbeing

into which I speak

itinerant life

—

into desert

failed of purpose

dust devil flows:

universal wind

—

blossoms

traveling the ground

purposeless

until decomposition

—

fleeing revelation

image

vanishes in the sun:

shadowed meaning

—

desert bees

ascend

into the same mystery

as retreating flock of birds

—

in foreign language

God rises:

incomprehensible path

walked through each we

—

branched death

piercing sky

desert tree

—

in this prison

only a tree

upon which to write

with eyes

—

foreign language

conducting existence

music on the outside

—

tall strong

branching into thin

again into again

until lost

in touch toward sky:

wintered tree

—

foreign language

sharp shoals of presence

—

failed of reach

branches divide again

into try

—

devout in fail

branches

reach toward sky

—

immersed in language unknown

I bob

in the flow

of other purpose

—

on the ground

a probability space:

jagged rock

worn down

through our steps

—

burnt

catapulted to foreign ground

for its being

pushed sidewise into face

—

slanting

against history

outcrop

just juts

—

reclined

hands folded

ever sleeping

ledge

is

—

root bowed

above ground

escapes again

into oblivion

—

wind howls

in outside

too dense

to enter our are

—

wind:

voice touched

—

heaven decays

into Being:

human geology

—

on men

symbols travel

their carriers dumb

to the burden

—

I box myself in words

until they collapse

spilling paths

—

 after [the Israeli poet] Yehuda Amichai:

I went through a door

thought exit

but it said “exist”

–

My directing hand

an angel

merely another angle

in the world

—

old

speaking their past

grounded elsewhere

knotting our here

—

purity run so long

it has no origin:

rain

—

children

flow history

cast aground

becoming its bank

—

fly

hysterically asks

notice

of its origin

—

rights

shatter our walls

migrating our fear

—

island of meaning

untouched by others:

haiku

—

full mind

holding an atom:

poem’s end

—

God awaits

failed understanding

to maze us

into Him

—

needle words

escaping barriers:

haiku

—

weeping

to be the rain

not come

—

solitude

shattered by God

shattering all else

—

speaking what others do

humanity weaves itself

foreign made common in say

—

speaking incessantly

humanity grounds

away from void

—

symbol:

place to stand

to stay a present

—

laughter:

wicked juxtaposition

refusing the flow

for other flow:

dancing the void

—

laughter

dissolving our selves

into intangible humanity:

Being the lost pause

—

soar in false release

from the competition you are:

flock in flight

—

blossom falls

pistil hands of prayer

—

stuttered speech

breaking free from the flow

poem

—

eddies in the flow

haiku

—

fortressed in faith

we watch others die

in our outside

—

calculus of the universe

riding us to decision

—

as I dissipate

my words travel

saying what they saw

–

(Suzuki’s death poem, found among papers

dated to several years before his death,

in his retirement desk.  Death poems are

a somewhat fictional tradition of Chinese and

Japanese Zen (and haiku) masters,

said to be written as the immediate

knowledge of death comes; see Yoel Hoffmann,

 Japanese death poems:  written by Zen monks and haiku

poets on the verge of death, 1998.  KQB)

—

Mitland/Suzuki poems

—

 

creation

makes its own ground

God afeared

—

trapped in the word God

we bend

to its will

—

freedom

rising

on winds of others’ necessity

—

snow masks

our steps

history’s escape

—

hopping on faces

unending

the view from nowhere

—

density of faces

making one mountain

deity absolute

—

God awaits

faith

moving mountains

moving Him

—

symbols

landscape emptiness

refuge while evolution works

—

Man alights on desert

too hard to trace his steps

speaking the landscape

ground denies

—

pummeled face

erased for history

sacred text

—

image

wearing image

wearing image

–

reality in the steps

—

evolution

scythes itself

miracle of life

—

surplus life

makes far horizon

absconding evolution

—

visages

watch each other

into decay:

transient Godhood

—

Rosetta pocked

untranslatable:

boulder god

that never was

—

atop  ridge’s

humbled necessity

of face

pushing through its ground

astounded at the vacuum

of sky

—

on the slope

precarious alone

boulder’s Being

—

distant mountains

veiled in thunder

God on the margin

—

valley

goads wind

into power

–

cupped hands in prayer