Poetry without Borders

Poetry without borders...

道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。

A dao that may be spoken is not the enduring Dao.

A name that may be named is not an enduring name.

Please do not read this introduction. There is already enough dust in your mind about what a poem could be or should be. These poems are wildings. Above all please don’t expect anything related to your sense of self or identity. These wildings have no intention to add to your self-understanding or your feeling of humanity. They are songs of གཅོད - that is ‘Chöd’ in the Tibetan language, songs that gnaw and cut at the ego. After all if you want to live organically among the creatures of nature, including human creatures, what’s the point of an ‘I’ anyway. It just gets in the way of everything. 

Equally don’t expect ‘beauty’ or ‘elegance’ or the ‘sublime’. These wildings do not pretend to represent anything. Like the 山水 (mountain-water) paintings of China, they are twisting paths of words and pictures which call you to lose yourself. And if you think that means esoteric mysticism, wrong again. These wildings breathe, feed and bleed in the real world where we need the clear-mindedness of animals.

A Silk Road once joined Wessex to Xi’an, then Chang’an, the City of Peace. Along the road cultures contested and coupled, joining in new lives, new thoughts, new words. It is a metaphor for connectedness - the concrete material road, the organic sensual spirit of silk.

There are silk roads waiting to be built everywhere.

Now, listen, get lost.....

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Chris Nash