MU YU DRUMS, CHANG CHUN, 1991
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/300/1/MU-YU-DRUMS-CHANG-CHUN-1991-/Page1.html
Kevin Dobbs
Kevin Dobbs returned to the USA
recently after 18 years in Asia. He’s Dean of Language Arts and Fine
Arts at Yuba College in Northern California and has placed poems,
fiction, and essays in many journals and anthologies including Chelsea,
Raritan: a Quarterly Review, The New York Quarterly, Carolina
Quarterly, Florida Review, Sou’wester, Soundings East, Poet Lore,
Mid-American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Karamu, Gulf Stream, Writer’s Forum, and New Delta Review. By Kevin Dobbs
Published on 02/23/2005
From across the flower garden
the monks' chanting
wakes me as it does
every morning. From our bed
I can see into the temple
windows-shadows
the monks' chanting
wakes me as it does
every morning. From our bed
I can see into the temple
windows-shadows
From across the flower garden
the monks' chanting
wakes me as it does
every morning. From our bed
I can see into the temple
windows-shadows
of shaved heads swaying
to the beat
of Mu Yu drums.
Their noses are perked up
to the curls of incense;
I can smell it faintly.
Yesterday I told Tan Yi
I'd like to chant with them,
to see so much
and not care. She remembers
when Red Guards took
the monks away
and turned the temple
into a people's factory
that made uniforms
in dark colors. Many years later
the monks, one by one,
came back-the light
in their eyes changed
to fish bowls of suspicion.
Soon she heard the chants
again, the beats a little amiss.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2005. All Rights Reserved.
the monks' chanting
wakes me as it does
every morning. From our bed
I can see into the temple
windows-shadows
of shaved heads swaying
to the beat
of Mu Yu drums.
Their noses are perked up
to the curls of incense;
I can smell it faintly.
Yesterday I told Tan Yi
I'd like to chant with them,
to see so much
and not care. She remembers
when Red Guards took
the monks away
and turned the temple
into a people's factory
that made uniforms
in dark colors. Many years later
the monks, one by one,
came back-the light
in their eyes changed
to fish bowls of suspicion.
Soon she heard the chants
again, the beats a little amiss.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2005. All Rights Reserved.