I Visit The Site Of Seattle's Chinese Garden Poem by Denis Mair

In Seattle there is a bluff overlooking Puget Sound.
An old man digging in his yard told me it was called Pigeon Hill.
I tried to imagine how it got that name.
Maybe passenger pigeons once flocked in multitudes,
And it was site of a passenger pigeon massacre.

The bluff is an island of quiet in West Seattle;
Now all but the north end has been made into a campus,
But the slopes of the bluff are still wooded.
From the open hilltop you see a cityscape across the SSound;
At the edge, you barely see the harbor through the trees.
Seattle and Chongqing, two sister cities, plan to make a garden here.

What is now a swale at one end of the meadow
Will be transformed to a one-acre lotus pond.
I hope someday the garden truly can be finished.
Though I have no rituals, I'll sit by this pond that's dedicated to the lotus:
An amphibious flower, anchored in the muck,
Floating in a clear medium, emerging into the light—
Perfect symbol for outgrowths of the human spirit.

I'll sit there thinking of phrases from the sutras.
I will wait there for someone, it won't matter if she comes or not,
And if she does, she'll come tripping past the edge, like a new song.
I'll read Associations on a Lotus by Yu Guangzhong,
Looking up I'll gaze on the iron lotuses of Seattle's skyline.

On Pu-tuo Island off of China's southeast coast,
Folks tell of a traveler from across the sea,
Who studied the true teachings from patriarchs in China.
With his freight of knowledge, he waited for clear weather;
He honored Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion,
But in a vision he saw iron lotus flowers growing from the sea.
He left her statue in a niche, didn't take her home across the water.
For generations Guanyin waited in the Grotto of Booming Surf,
Listening to the sea of bitterness, that drowns all single voices;
Guanyin only travels westward with those who honor her.

Now archipelagoes of iron lotuses dot the sea.
Travelers ride on metal vessels, rise in fantastic flight,
To arrive at this place of close-ranked towers that I watch from a hilltop.
The gantries and wharfs, the bridges and skyscrapers,
Tiered halls of veined stone, vaulted rooms, walkways marked with velvet rope,
Precious trees of cliff and jungle, felled and split, to adorn the walls.
Everywhere connected by easeful thoroughfares.
I see evidence of a mind-storm that blew
Thousands of things to pieces,
Then with cunning eddies refashioned amazing growths.
What are these tiered, sky-aiming halls but excrescences of man's mind?
Though few places pay honor to the quiet thoughts of a pilgrim.

This is a place for 'autos':
Compressed fire in metal chambers sends gleaming pods
Humming down the avenues,
Running ultra-fast on the film of oil in their bearings,
On the volatile oil in their tanks,
They are sliding along on oil;
They are really just snails; they are not moving fast at all.
The gleaming towers are mimicries of temples, but devoted to gain;
The skimming pods can only parody the quick leap of thought,
Or so I think when I look through jaundiced eyes.

The Seattle Chinese Garden will have a thatched pavilion
To house the memory of the Tang poet Du Fu.
Du Fu wrote the hard history of his times in verse, but stayed as innocent as a child.
Chased from place to place by wars and rebellions,
He spent a few peaceful years in Sichuan province.
The military governor paid for thatch and beams.
Du Fu planted one hundred spotted bamboos,
One hundred purple bamboos,
Sixty mountain apricots…
Everything he planted is written down in poems.
Even now Sichuan is proud of the years Du Fu spent there.

A gentle traveler will come to the shelter on Pigeon Hill,
All around will grow familiar Sichuan plants, haven for the nature lover.
The lotus pond will be his place to contemplate.
He can descend to the Sound, find a replacement for his broken boat,
Roving among the islands, tapping the boat's sides, he will sing new poems;
Many people will be glad to have him as their guest;
No more need for his bureaucratic fumblings at the provincial courthouse!
This quiet place will give a great poet his long-deserved patronage.
(But not such a tribute as some must pay to Vincent Van Gogh,
With auctions over his anguished soul.)

Anyone can come to this quiet pond of lotuses:
It will be nestled here, given a place,
Among the iron lotuses, for the city.