‘Impermanence’: A Poem by Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano

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Impermanence

There’s uproar in the poplars overhead—
A dry wind surging from the sun-struck west,
Already hot with power and vastly spread
Over these plains and not yet come to rest.

Out on a jaunt, I push through weeds and grass.
With no fixed goal, I swelter, cough, and sneeze,
Assailed by heat. Above, great cloud-ships pass
Eastward, sublimely balanced on the breeze.

The charging weather flings up whirls of dirt.
The poplar leaves are shaking with each gust
As if in celebration, rage, or hurt,
While I squint through a blur of curling dust.

Downhill the swamp lies green; rich grasses grow
Where ravaged tree-wrecks, these all dead, loom stark
And crooked with discarded limbs below—
Unsightly specters with split sleeves of bark.

The western sun is glaring on the scene
While tiny birds, a hapless cluster, cling
To branches high in blue above the green
And seem to have no strength to flap or sing.

And I, much buffeted by age and wind,
Straggle on thorny ground, unbalanced, slow,
And wary of a fall, with changes dinned
Into my senses as the mad gales blow.

Against impermanence no form can stay
Whole and unscarred. I bend beneath the threat
Of storm and loss. My injury today
Is only seeing here more failure yet.

Behind a shrub I mean to find relief
In shade where I can shield myself the best
And hope to be, somehow, preserved from grief
While blazing power pours in from the west.

I almost tumble. Here low thistles sting
As past my ears more dust and spinning leaves
Fly roaring east. New minutes only bring
New insults, which the passive earth receives.

It’s true, green saplings struggle up among
Debris from former and exhausted years,
But for how long shall I dare call them young?
Vain growth wears out and bleak decay appears.

I crouch, repelled by upset all around,
The woods disheveled, lawns in disarray,
No butterflies, no life on dusty ground,
And summer’s atmosphere made sick and gray.

Time in a tumult rolls. Here I endure,
Though no high thing, no presence, reaches me,
Till of an absence suddenly I’m sure.
I marvel that the wind has ceased to be.

Just as a breath expended slides away,
The frightful, plunging, disarranging blast
Is blast no more, with nothing more to say.
Now quietness returns to me at last.

I wait for clear air to arrive. It does,
To overrule the blazing and the bleak.
Cicadas, two or three, renew their buzz
And set a fitting rhythm as they speak.

I look about, and in the east I view
Landscape hard-beaten but recovering.
Cloud-ships far off have traveled free and true.
Birds in the dead trees flap and maybe sing.

Strangely in change itself I find a hope,
Not for an age or a year but merely now,
Because above the drab and somber slope
Rise butterflies as timeless laws allow.

There’s freshness in the poplars overhead—
A small breeze lilting from the sun-struck west.
Who knows how long? It’s cool and vastly spread
Over these plains and not yet come to rest.

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Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano is a native of Kentucky who for many years has been a bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk of the Theravāda tradition.