The first plan in the book of Yih describes the metamorphosis of dragonkind. In the beginning the dragons were submerged but desired to reach the light above. So they swam to the surface, crawled up onto the shore, setting out to explore the land. They reveled in the sun, but at the end of day their supple skin was scorched. So they leapt up into the air, heading back for those dark depths from whence they came. Look at the dragons! Flying in the sky! But they did not reach their ancient lair; they fell and sank into the mire. Drawn up from the bowels of earth by the light of day the dragons first inhabited the three great realms of the fish, the mammal and the bird.

The second plan in the book of Yih describes the evolution of humankind. In the beginning there was the sack tied up to hold in all the world. Then came the earth, first straight, then square. Next came the dragons whose cryptic map recorded the hidden lines. Soon frost was underfoot and winter was near at hand. The old dragons battled in the wilds; their blood was sable and amber. Two-legged humans inherited the earth, donning their garments of gold. The yellow sack had held the entire world immobile, but now just clothed the myriad bags of mortal blood and bone.

The charts are many and the circuitous routes are numbered as the square of the cube of two. One path leads to a broken jug at the bottom of a well, the second to a burnished cauldron, its handles fashioned of jade. In one locale the tigers prowl, so the pot is banged and voices ring, while elsewhere tiger tails are tread upon. When the road is blocked by a watercourse, the fox is afraid of wetting its tail, but the hare sails across in a hollow gourd. These tales describe the ancestral journeys taken when the world was young, but the veins of heaven and grains of earth were old before dragons were hatched. So now let's tread upon the paths that crossed the sages' minds, and crawl beside the writhing tracks of dragons forging signs. The key to the box of the book of Yih is tied up in a yellow bag.

A Tied-Up Sack

 

The mote

In the eye

Of the galactic storm

Is Hnn Tnn, the Hungry,

Omnivorous orb.

 

Now the seed of Hhn Thn

Grows in girth

In the midst of the fathomless void,

Until his bulk contains

The whole of nought,

A bloated sack,

A calabash,

A wineskin bulging at the seams.

Ten thousand aeons

For his macrocosmic body,

Bag of space,

To turn itself completely inside-out,

Height to revolve

Into cavernous depth,

Sun into a vanished organ.

 

Hwn Twn swallows the seas.

Lightning dragons too are

Sucked into that maw.

Shu, Shamanka of the North,

And Hu, the Shaman of the South,

Are sealed by the depths of ocean

And perceive on recovering,

Not a hole,

Not a crack,

Not a sound anywhere.

"We have seven openings," they count,

"For seeing, hearing, eating, breathing.

He," they grope at Hun Tun's head,

"has none.

We shall cut, we shall core. . . ."

 

They fasten on the breath of thought,

Begin the rites of penetration

In the search for buried light:

Their tool of breath

Now sows the seed of hearing,

Now sews the thread of sight--

And just when Hurn Turn thinks to blink--

Out shoots awhirl a needle or a root,

To tap the sack and puncture inner space.

 

Look!

That trickle--

Silver, subtle as a star--

Seeping through a thousand leagues

Of sea!

 

Then with further penetration comes

The incipient yet brilliant

Fascination--

Flavor,

Sharpened by the pair of smiths

To complex recollections of desire.

Horn Torn suffers more

With each long burst of light.

Light is ambivalent wealth,

The arrow of love,

The flash of anger,

That he no longer can extinguish.

Light slays him.

His sides are rent.

 

A new, sudden, unpredictable cosmos,

Yet prone to ancient dark and danger,

Takes the dragons by storm.

They are knocked unconscious

By the tides of unleashed emotion.

Hon Ton implodes,

Sucking Shu and Hu

Into a spinning vortex.

Won Don explodes,

Revealing the earth's uncertain origin.

Seven blows or portals in a breath-bag,

Seven horns or orifices in the microcosmic head

Of Hun Dun.

Straight and Square

 

Pon Ghu emerges,

Creature of paradox,

Dwarf

Yet giant.

His tinctured body seems all silver and gold.

The crown of light he wears--

Like the motif of a star--

Is a beacon to the surf at his boatlike feet,

A witness to the embroidered tapestry

Of sky at his fingertips.

Bundled in his titan arms,

An egg encases double embryos,

A swollen, swirling crucible

Of yin and yang.

 

He tries his eyes. . .

Their dazzling glare reveals the pod of space

That is his gaol.

Yet the Pon Ghu knows no bounds:

He bellows with a thundering rage,

Then charges.

For 18,000 years

He batters with that bullhide ram,

But every inch he gains his body grows.

Undaunted,

He crouches,

He leaps,

And with his sword of light he severs the sack.

But the cataclysm kills him.

 

The shock of worlds dividing

90,000 miles asunder

Knocks Pon Ghu off his feet.

He falls full length and backwards,

Crashing,

Spread-eagled.

Promptly is his breath the wind

That shapes the clouds into reflections of mouth,

Flaring nostrils,

Lightning rage,

Thunder.

 

One eye glares.

Darkness falls in a curtain of blood

Revealing myopic other eye

Wobbling

In the night sky.

 

Pon Ghu's

Body now floats in space.

Hands and feet have taken root

In opposite directions.

Arms and legs like wings

Stretch behind him backwards

To encompass a new earth and ocean.

Knees are drawn upwards into mountain peaks.

Elbows and hands seem to sweep downwards

From squares of trunk

Or globe of body.

 

Flesh of soil glimmers.

Bamboo hair vaguely shines.

Sweat of jade.

Precious ores.

Veins.

Mountain waves.

Arterial cracks.

Rivers.

 

Soon will come swarming droves of fleas,

Teeming populations,

The myriad clans and the hundred names

Of two-legged black-haired Man,

To inherit the yellow earth,

Pon Ghu's plague.

Dragons Appearing in the Field

 

Lying liberated in a vale of tears,

The egg of plague

And bicameral yolk

Is nourished in the nest of Earth,

In the caress of Heaven,

For another ten thousand years.

Creeping mist is the aura of Sky;

Branching wood is the aura of Earth.

Fog and leaf feed the transmutation,

And the egg is quickened.

It begins to shake.

A scratching noise betrays a dragon claw,

Five-toed,

But a manly hand appears instead,

Five-fingered,

Then a head and brawny torso.

Another head emerges with sable locks

To rival the snow-clad shoulder

Of the mountaintop.

With a last concerted heave

Serpent tails untwine

And siblings burst asunder

Out the fractured calabash.

 

Fructified by the summer wind,

Human eyes shine like pools of pearl.

Perhaps in answer to some silent command,

Human heads bow past saurian scales

Toward the four quarters of Earth,

Affording the newborn their first feast of sight,

Sun-spangled

And sonorously baritone

The day of primal awakening.

 

To climb and cling like apes

Is second nature to their limbs,

So the hatchlings forage lichee nuts,

Grub for the ginseng root,

Search the trees for the monkey peach,

And drink the dew.

Companions are the Qhi-lin and Phoenix,

Leopard and Tiger;

They follow the giant Turtle.

At sunrise they romp and roam

About the pristine forests,

Vales and meadows.

At sunset they follow the rise of the Fire Star

In the flight of the Cerulean Dragon.

At night they sleep in mountain caves

The death-like slumber of ancient trees.

 

Ever in sync with the natural regularities

Twice each year are the playful twins

Acutely aware of an impending change.

Today the sun reversed its course

And began its annual journey to the south.

 

The two dragons dance a solstitial rite

To mock the confluence of Heaven and Earth.

Looking up to the Heart of the Dragon

And down to the calling Phoenix,

They bow to the four quarters

Of the ecliptic.

With tails twining

In the co-mingling vapors,

They resume for the bat

Of a mammalian eyelash

The reptilian brain

Of ancestral Shu

And Hu.

 

In a Calabash

was first published in the British journal

TALUS Vols. 9-10 (1997), pages 52-97

 

 

For those interested in acquiring the original publication, it is available at a cost of £6, plus postage, from the following address:

 

Dr. Shamoon Zamir, Editor, TALUS

Department of English

King's College London

Strand

London WC2R 2LS

United Kingdom