Cloud Moving Hands

By Cathy Song

These poems, threaded by the teachings of Buddha, examine loss—the death of a loved one, the longing for a child, the yearning for another place and time—and the suffering such attempts transpire, but ultimately the poems are an affirmation that to be born into human life is our greatest opportunity to transform loss and sorrow into awakening joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2007
• ISBN: 9780822991212

Book preview

Lady Mappo Enters the City of Samsara

Lady Mappo Enters the City of Samsara

Lady Mappo enters

the city of Samsara

one more time, this time

less worldly, intent on

making a little progress.

Prone to lapses, she

experiences fruition

of past conditions,

committing an indiscretion

with a former lover.

Whatever had been

left over between them they

burn in a single

encounter at a roadside inn,

nocturnal travelers bound

by the confusion

of sleeves, old entanglements

curled like loose hair

on pillows her maid gathers

the morning after. She sweeps

discreetly, protects

her mistress, who delivers

into this life a

child she cannot keep, a child

inexplicably wanted.

To continue life

as it is, knowing the child

exists, burdens her.

She flees to a nunnery,

seeks solace in the absence

of luxury, maids

replacing a soiled sock,

unrolling at the

feeblest yawn immaculate

blankets, attending to her

ink-black, floor-length hair,

now brutally shorn, prickly

as the thin straw mat

that bristles through her tender

dreams. As a child she watched

the gardener pluck

leaves off the moss-framed pond.

He serviced his days

raking the water like a

beggar retrieving coins.

No sooner would he

turn than a wind would scatter

more leaves. Even then

she thought how meaningless to

glide from room to room, artful

and arranged, so

beautifully attired,

behind paper walls.

She was a leaf on that pond,

polished like a mirror,

a beggar thrashing

for coins. Relinquishing the

child she prays May I

be reborn again as your

mother. To this end she works

diligently, writes

letters for the nunnery,

copies sutras, scrolls

undulating like sea kelp.

Ink-black strands tattoo her skin.

Her vanity at times

outshines her piety.

The finer weave of

her garment stirs jealousy,

shimmering undertones of

indigo silver.

The others hang slack, dull gray.

Stealing gruel from

a sleeping nun's rice bowl, she's

caught, and the Abbess sighs.

Life, the cruelest

teacher, will catch up to her.

While others chant May

I be reborn into the

Pure Land, she whispers May I

be reborn again

as your mother. Diverting

from the single flame,

she follows a mixed

auxiliary path, lights

more than her share of

incense. Difficult to be

born into human

form, difficult to be born

a mother, the chance to make

amends with another.

When the child hears the story

of the nun who spent

a life of chosen exile

at a temple close to where

the child was raised,

who chose to return to the

loud and teeming

city of Samsara in

the coarse manifestation

of birth giving, he

knows she is his lost mother,

the shrine of his own

inconsolable longing.

The boy vows to follow her

into the next life.

Accumulating enough

merit by virtue

of her loss, she burns past debt,

and is reborn a housewife,

with ordinary

aspirations for a child

so curiously

sweet she often wonders what