The Price of the Earth

Where I have built my home
is where I dream with others.
Here, there is no magic realism—
and if you ask me, Can it be so?
I would answer:
How shall you dwell with us,
when once you thought
death itself need not come for me?
 
When thought grows distant,
a bird alights upon the window.
When the heart draws near,
the mountains withdraw.
How strange—
the temple flags in the east are flying,
while my gaze is fixed
upon the southern hills.
 
At day’s end,
the western wind brings trade;
in the forest the deer breathe long sighs.
Alas, disaster—
those who raised walls upon the riverbank
now have dead snails fallen at their feet.
 
The birds’ craft—
their planes of air—
move with the wind.
They who have borne pain
and worn the ochre robe of detachment
must pay the toll of time—
give it its rightful honour.
 
Paper boats are lost
in the summons of life;
in the forest’s lovely bend
adornments stand in ordered rows.
Who plays at games
with words filled with metre?
Their lives are their own age;
honey-thieves and sinners alike.
 
Love a ghostly mind,
and a child will be born today;
again and again to die,
till sin is wholly shed.
No one shall keep your memory—
you become a stone effigy;
whose shadow falls there,
where crows defile the head?
 
Where a sign of truth is found,
say this: there is no mind,
there are no wings.
From the child springs equality—
woman and man—
the ideal, the means,
most of all the ancient ways.
 
A Creator has gone into the forest,
a sorrowing existence treading
between two extremes of thought;
finding back wisdom
in the midst of illness.
 
In the dark,
the kite in its black robe
covers itself,
and flies silently
toward the cremation ground.
 
Divided is the one who claims his death—
this small, discarded thing.
Let their children live in their own glory—
with milk and rice,
in the restless morning.
 
The price of the earth,
the rightful fate of man—
Come, let us make the offering
with both our hands today.