Painting a Mountain Stream

Running and standing still at once

is the whole truth. Raveled or combed,

wrinkled or clear, it gets its force

from losing force. Going it stays.

Pulse beats, and planets echo this,

the running down, the standing still,

all thunder of the one thought.

The mind that thinks it is unfounded.

I speak of what is running down.

Of sun, of thunder bearing the rain

I do not speak, of the rising flame

or the slow towering of the elm.

A comb was found in a girl's grave

(ah heartsblood raveled like a rope).

The visible way is always down,

but there is no floor to the world.

Study this rhythm, not this thing.

The brush's tip streams from the wrist

of a living man, a dying man.

The running water is the wrist.

In the confluence of the wrist

things and ideas ripple together,

as in the clear lake of the eye,

unfathomably, running remains.

The eye travels on running water,

out to the sky, if you let it go.

However often you call it back

it travels again, out to the sky.

The water that seemed to stand is gone.

The water that seemed to run is here.

Steady the wrist, steady the eye;

paint this rhythm, not this thing.

Structure

32 lines · 8 stanzas