Gary Snyder: Online Poems Essay, Research Paper

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of the light

Online

Source

For All

Ah to be alive

on a mid-September morn

fording a stream

barefoot, pants rolled up,

holding boots, pack on,

sunshine, ice in the shallows,

northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters

stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes

cold nose dripping

singing inside

creek music, heart music,

smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil

of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity

under the sun

With joyful interpenetration for all.

Online

Source

On Top

All this new stuff goes on top

turn it over, turn it over

wait and water down

from the dark bottom

turn it inside out

let it spread through

Sift down even.

Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

Online

Source

Hay for the Horses

He had driven half the night

From far down San Joaquin

Through Mariposa, up the

Dangerous Mountain roads,

And pulled in at eight a.m.

With his big truckload of hay

behind the barn.

With winch and ropes and hooks

We stacked the bales up clean

To splintery redwood rafters

High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa

Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,

Itch of haydust in the

sweaty shirt and shoes.

At lunchtime under Black oak

Out in the hot corral,

—The old mare nosing lunchpails,

Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—

"I’m sixty-eight" he said,

"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.

I thought, that day I started,

I sure would hate to do this all my life.

And dammit, that’s just what

I’ve gone and done."

From Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder, published by North Point

Press. Copyright ? 1958,

1959, 1965 Gary Snyder. Online Source

Old Bones

Out there walking round, looking out for food,

a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack

plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,

barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—

carry some—look for some,

go for a hungry dream.

Deer bone, Dall sheep,

bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere

a shrine for the old ones,

the dust of the old bones,

old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—

how we all prevailed.

from Mountains and Rivers Without End, published by Counterpoint Press, 1996. Online Source

Kisiabaton

Beat-up datsun idling in the road

shreds of fog

almost-vertical hillsides drop away

huge stumps fading into mist

soft warm rain

Snaggy, forked and spreading tops, a temperate cloud-forest tree

Chamaecyparis formosiana–

Taiwan hinoki,

hung-kuai red cypress

That the tribal people call kisiabaton

this rare old tree

is what we came to see.

from No Nature by Gary Snyder. Copyright? 1992 by Gary Snyder. Online

Source

At Tower Peak

Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing

Freeways are clogged all day

Academies packed with scholars writing papers

City people lean and dark

This land most real

As its western-tending golden slopes

And bird-entangled central valley swamps

Sea-lion, urchin coasts

Southerly salmon-probes

Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills

Along a range of granite peaks

The names forgotten,

An eastward running river that ends out in desert

The chipping ground-squirrels in the tumbled blocks

The gloss of glacier ghost on slab

Where we wake refreshed from ten hours sleep

After a long day’s walking

Packing burdens to the snow

Wake to the same old world of no names,

No things, new as ever, rock and water,

Cool dawn birdcalls, high jet contrails.

A day or two or million, breathing

A few steps back from what goes down

In the current realm.

A kind of ice age, spreading, filling valleys

Shaving soils, paving fields, you can walk in it

Live in it, drive through it then

It melts away

For whatever sprouts

After the age of

Frozen hearts. Flesh-carved rock

And gusts on the summit,

Smoke from forest fires is white,

The haze above the distant valley like a dusk.

It’s just one world, this spine of rock and streams

And snow, and the wash of gravels, silts

Sands, bunchgrasses, saltbrush, bee-fields,

Twenty million human people, downstream, here below.

from No Nature by Gary Snyder. Copyright? 1992 by Gary Snyder. Online

Source

Smokey the Bear Sutra

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,

the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite

Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements

and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,

the flying beings, and the sitting beings — even grasses,

to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a

seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning

Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called

America. It will have great centers of power called

such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,

Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels

such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon

The human race in that era will get into troubles all over

its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of

its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings

of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.

My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and

granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that

future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure

the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:

and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing

that he is aroused and

watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath

appearances; cuts the roots of useless

attach- ments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display — indicating that all

creatures have the full right to live to

their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow

in the realm of the

Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the

countless men oppressed by a

civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that

guard the Wilderness, which is the

Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through

mountains —

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the

kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of

those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and

free in the Blue Sky

and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food

enough for everyone who loves her

and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the

worms of capitalism and

totalitarianism;

Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses,

canned foods, universities, and shoes;

master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down

the rotten

trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover

trash.

Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will

Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or

slander him,

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana

Sphataya hum traks ham nam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND

BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,

Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick

people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,

or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out

with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice willl

accumulate merit as countless as the

sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.

Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.

Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.

Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine

tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.

thus have we heard.

(may be reproduced free forever)