Oriole Songs (2) by Kong Shiu Loon
Meditation
Let the attention in your senses and thoughts shift
To reside in your cool calm consciousness seat
Let your fancied love and casual improvisations
Off from the spring of your desire and passion
Put away your needs and greed
Aspirations and dreams for wealth and self-serving deeds
You will then ride while you are sitting
On the wings of silence
Across mountains of fear and worries
Seas of daily concerns and cares
To land on the quietude of paradise
A state of your mind
To realize a satisfaction in tranquility
When your life is above survival
When you kindle what is meaningful
When you are your own master
Deep at Night
I look out of my window in the small hours of night
Before me stands a mount of dark trees thick and high
Adjourning are buildings of various heights
The sky mute looks down with opaque eyes
Nothing attempts to stir or to travel
Scattered lights flicker not in faint yellow
They too seem to be in respite
Could this be just an illusion of mine
Three skyscrapers tower up especially tall
They stand still like unsharpened swords
In darkness dotted lights glimmer not at all
People are in slumber some even snore
Life is not restive in this city corner when time is still
In a few hours hustle and bustle the space filled
It was only yesterday when typhoon Kaitake swept through
Ah this calm and silky reticence are just temporary too
Silence asleep is neither a beauty nor peace
This passivity is a wonder in a world of unease
My mind tranquil cherishes only rest
I care little what might or might not be the best
Life and Death
My aunt ninety died recently after a lengthy convalescence
When friends and relatives offer their condolence
Her children reply that she was very old
As if it was just as well for her to go
A great grandson was born a week after she had died
There was jubilance to welcome him in a world of rights
In reply to people’s call for celebration
The parents say the birth is just a new expectation
I remember Trotsky who said old age is the most unexpected
Of all things that can happen to a man
And lines of Yeats Ah do not mourn
Eternity our souls are love a continual farewell
Both Laoze and Zhongze saw life and death as natural
Then life eternal is held in a person’s own hands
Health is enhanced by being content of what life presents
And satisfaction deepens accepting the cycle of life and death
Only so would life begins its fruitful strives
And death dwells with a final peaceful respite