[This document can be acquired from a sub-directory coombspapers via anonymous FTP and/or COOMBSQUEST gopher on the node COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU] The document's ftp filename and the full directory path are given in the coombspapers top level INDEX file] [This version: 22 July 1993] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TITLE: Hungry Complete Fullness Sesshin, Easter, 1993 AUTHOR: Susan MURPHY SOURCE: Mind Moon Circle quartely, Winter 1993, pp.30-31 NOTES: Australian Sesshin Poems and other Poems by Members and Visitors of/to the Sydney Zen Center. This poem is dedicated to John Tarrant, Roshi i A strong alchemy it was the dark joy rising to radiance inside the third that is not given: the third is never given but is found ah there! beneath the river of the heart prised open by sesshin ii Sitting turned out at the prow by the great doors of the world old friends all but unseen but not unfelt strung like stars across the dark of my body hardly raising my eyes each glimpse a leaping into being of trees, mist, moon, dog verandah thump surging so far in like a wave it took the breath to tears the sacred salt of sesshin its hard sharp flavour sparkling on our bodies iii Rising to kinhin I wobble and see through dark glass bodies of my friends the coloured wet shuddering jewels of most intimate organs juddering gently every step we take along the cliffedge a sudden seeing fierce as the lion who looked into me the rocks themselves must flow iv the pattern of the days hooked on exacting needles by numbered supper-cook menus secretly slipping off into the sense of the only time there is: no resistance, but a hedging start the time-killer skulking round with a new offer: having to do things well it's called its image dry cicada shell clinging to bushes and grasses the green cicada having shrilled off into elsewhere eons ago this was irritant enough to tickle some real effort from the depths (oh, billowing there) and then a strange new thing back pain like a lodged sword v Calls up a new geography of effort its hard sharp flavour it's called squeezing round the corner right against the heart until it blazes into grief to melt the bones my own? the body's oldest grief is never done but always colours joy and yet it partly seemed another weeping woman's her upright back before me pierced by a death I want to hold her and to rock her vi But the great slow blaze takes even that away into its terrible delight that leaves so little of me I can weep (at last) for joy vii The pattern finds its form and name days later half-moon in great wide circle new hexagram, black-cliff-framed: Hungry Complete Fullness. Susan Murphy April, 1993 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- end of file