Senlin, A Biography: Part 03: His Cloudy Destiny - 01

Senlin sat before us and we heard him.     He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him.     Was he small, with reddish hair,     Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare     And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes?     I am alone: said Senlin; in a forest of leaves     The single leaf that creeps and falls.     The single blade of grass in a desert of grass     That none foresaw and none recalls.     The single shell that a green wave shatters     In tiny specks of whiteness on brown sands . . .     How shall you understand me with your hearts,     Who cannot reach me with your hands? . . .     The city dissolves about us, and its walls     Are the sands beside a sea.     We plunge in a chaos of dunes, white waves before us     Crash on kelp tumultuously,     Gulls wheel over foam, the clouds blow tattered,     The sun is swallowed . . . Has Senlin become a shore?     Is Senlin a grain of sand beneath our footsteps,     A speck of shell upon which waves will roar? . . .     Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . no answer,     Only the crash of sea on a shell-white shore.     Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all,     But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall;     And the familiar chair     Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair.