Burning Island
By Gary Snyder
O Wave God who broke through me today
Sea Bream
massive pink and silver
cool swimming down with me watching
staying away from the spear
Volcano belly Keeper who lifted this island
for our own beaded bodies adornment
and sprinkles us all with his laugh—
ash in the eve
mist, or smoke,
on the bare high limits—
underwater lava flows easing to coral
holes filled with striped feeding swimmers
O Sky Gods cartwheeling
out of Pacific
turning rainsqualls over like lids on us
then shine on our sodden—
(scanned out a rainbow today at the
cow drinking trough
sluicing off
LAKHS of crystal Buddha Fields
right on the hair of the arm!)
Who wavers right now in the bamboo:
a half-gone waning moon.
drank down a bowlful of shochu
in praise of Antares
gazing far up the lanes of Sagittarius
richest stream of our sky—
a cup to the center of the galaxy!
and let the eyes stray
right-angling the pitch of the Milky Way:
horse-heads rings
clouds too distant to be
slide free.
on the crest of the wave.
Each night
O Earth Mother
I have wrappt my hand
over the jut of your cobra-hood
sleeping;
left my ear
All night long by your mouth.
O All
Gods tides capes currents
Flows and spirals of
pool and powers—
As we hoe the field
let sweet potato grow.
And as sit us all down when we may
To consider the Dharma
bring with a flower and a glimmer.
Let us all sleep in peace together.
Bless Masa and me as we marry
at new moon on the crater
This summer.
VIII 40067
Copyright Credit: Gary Snyder, “Burning Island” from Regarding Wave. Copyright © 1970 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)