Iron Mountain. Mark Frutkin

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2. The Emperor Comes to the Wall

      Deep in the chaos of mountains

      the Emperor and his procession

      come to a wall.

      Like a snake

      or a flickering tail

      of lightning,

      the wall twists along

      mountain ridges

      until it disappears to the east

      until it disappears to the west.

      The peasants they ask do not know

      how far the wall goes

      but believe it must end

      two mountain chains beyond.

      But they have never walked that far,

      east or west.

      The Emperor and his procession

      follow the wall toward the setting sun

      until they can ride no farther

      and turn about.

      On arriving at their starting point

      they rest, then ride again

      toward the rising sun

      until they can ride no farther

      and turn about.

      When they have returned once again

      to their starting point,

      the Emperor is haunted

      by the belief that

      if he had kept on one day more

      in either direction

      he would have come to the wall’s end.

      His lieutenant watches him rise

      in his stirrups to gaze eastward,

      then turn to the west.

      His horse twists in a circle

      unsure which way to go.

      The Emperor sighs and waits

      and does nothing.

      The long procession of riders and horses

      waits too, in silence.

      He is waiting for a message from heaven.

      The dusk descends and still they wait.

      The wall twists and untwists

      through knotted skeins of mountains.

      No one moves.

      Night comes.

3. The Emperor’s Poem

      The iron mountain towers above us

      robed in mist, its crags

      reach through the clouds into heaven,

      a single white waterfall seems

      to thread down from the sky

      in steps and fragments

      and, like the trail behind us,

      disappears the way we have come.

      I see my lieutenant ahead

      alone on his horse.

      He reminds me of myself.

      Though I am the greatest Emperor

      the world has ever known,

      the mountain towering above

      was here before I came,

      will remain when I have gone.

      The first heavy rain will obliterate

      our footprints and any sign of our passing.

      In ten springs, a hundred, a thousand,

      this path will remain the signature

      of a traveller unknown, and the mist

      will continue to swirl and dissipate

      like poems breathed on air.

4. Chaos

      Like the mountains that sweep before us,

      fragmented and overlapping,

      our world is in chaos.

      My failure to bring order to my world

      stings me and causes me distress.

      I am the Emperor,

      yet the world is an avalanche of sorrows

      and I can do nothing.

      Long ago I gave up searching

      yet I ride on.

      I take my ease in a poor man’s hut.

      How is it my heart is soothed

      by the sight of two wooden buckets

      resting side by side in the doorway?

5. The Emperor Comes to the River

      I have come through a storm

      of mountains to find d9eGuan Yin,^* high peaks and low valleys, my heart torn and contorted as the concatenation of cliffs, the constant rupture of planes.

      All the streams have dissolved in the river,

      twisted down from the mountains

      and dissolved in the river.

      The water flows without obstruction

      like thoughts with no one attached to them.

      ^*Goddess of Compassion

Mountains, clouds

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