The Dark Bamboo of Qi Wu Lun

Any library, any bookshelf

Is more or less like Garry Kilworth’s

Imaginary wallscreen device

In his tale, Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands,

On which to view the lives of others,

Long since dead, over and over. Books

Offer lives of others, or skeletal leaves

Of those lives, for perusing, over

And over again. Most literate

People will never meet as many

Other persons, even live on-screen,

As they will have met only as text,

All of which move in a single wind,

Shifting them across the forest floor

Of a mind, freshest fallen on top,

Easiest to move, and the oldest,

Dankest, rotted mass on the bottom

Not even a storm can much disturb.

The voice of the wind may seem, Zhuangzi,

To be the voices of many things,

But how long since you spun in the wind?

The lives it turns over and over

Are not its instruments, are nothing

To what isn’t seeking anything.