In the South, No. 3

Talk about water is talk about gentleness,

women washing clothes by the riverbank,

on bamboo rafts, men poling, fishing with cormorants.

I stroll the stone dam, idling, watching.

Talk about water is talk of the ancient bridge,

night, lamps, the bright Milky Way,

people singing, dancing their joy. Talk about water

is talk about mood—this winter, secluded

from the cold, I’m like a heron gliding above the surface,

alone with its shadow, self-possessed. Talk about water

is talk about time, year after year

rolling in torrent or smooth as glass,

all of it sliding down the long river of history,

the unknowable future in wait. Talk about water

is talk about knowledge: one may learn

from women beating laundry,

from fishermen, from those who dance in lamplight,

to live casually, without great questions,

thinking neither of philosophy nor literature,

astronomy nor geography. But of course

talk about water may end

as talk about nothing,

merely gazing at water’s inversions in a trance,

trees, white houses pitched upside down,

until a breeze wrinkles the surface

and unceasing, everything undulates,

a kind of shattered beauty.