So I'm going to read a few earlier poems,
then I'm going to move into some very recent things.
This is a reproduction of a painting which
is stored in the fireproof storehouse of the Temple
of Juko-in in Daitoku-ji.
It's a small painting, actually.
I'm going to read a poem about it later.
It's only this big.
It was brought back from China in the 14th century,
on one of those Japanese-Chinese trading trips.
The painter was a Chinese Zen monk named Mu Ch'i who
the Chinese have described in their own writings as a second
rate painter who painted wonderful dragons--
and was also notable for tigers, which were really big,
really big things.
But these this little painting, the persimmons,
and several other paintings of chestnuts and eggplants,
are not considered, in the Chinese tradition,
worth mentioning.
Whereas the Japanese said, oh, these
are the best Zen paintings we've ever seen, and bought them,
and took them back.
And the persimmons painting, now,
is actually considered, in some circles at least,
one of the world's great classic paintings.
I acknowledge most occidentals-- euro-Americans and so forth--
are not necessarily going to agree with that.
But wherever did you see six persimmons drawn so well?
We'll go back to that.
I've got another story about that painting, too.
It ended up at Daitoku-ji.
And the trade items, interestingly,
were Japanese swords for Chinese zen paintings.
The Chinese were trying to deal with the Mongols,
and they were buying up Japanese swords as trade items.
Because they were-- even the Chinese acknowledged this--
the best swords they could get.
OK, back to our own times.
1958, I'm working in the engine room of a tanker--
an oil tanker-- taking a break from being in a zen temple.
Using my old seamans papers that I got when I was 18.
And we are heading back empty for the Persian
Gulf, for our second trip to the Persian Gulf,
going just south of the Bonin islands,
otherwise known as the Ogasawaras
And one night, I wrote this poem.
"Oil."
Soft rain squalls on the swells south of the Bonins,
late at night.
Light from the empty mess-hall throws back
bulky shadows of winch and fairlead
over the slanting fantail where I stand.
But for men on watch in the engine room,
the man at the wheel, the lookout in the bow,
the crew sleeps.
In cots on deck or narrow iron bunks
down drumming passageways below.
The ship burns with a furnace heart, steam veins, and copper
nerves quivers and slightly twists and always goes--
easy roll of the hull and deep vibration of the turbines
underfoot.
baring what all these crazed, hooked nations need--
steel plates and long injections of pure oil.