To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Robert
Bringhurst
Yongjia Xuanjue
Not a river, a road. What flows without flowing.
The sentence we read and reread with our feet,
not the pages we write and rewrite
and rewrite and rewrite with our hands.
What is is wherever the living
are walking. It limps through the earth,
swims through the water, flies through the air,
and it runs the full distance without ever moving.
What is is wherever the living
are walking. Not where the dead have planted
their flags. Where the living are walking, the dead,
the unborn and the newborn are comfortably riding.
The truth has two sides and two faces,
two bellies, tow backs, but the top of truth
is the bottom. The truth is that simple; the truth
is that twisted; the truth is that thin
Your hand cannot hold it; your mind
cannot leave it behind. When you chase it,
it runs. When you walk, it comes toward you.
Wherever you stand, it sprouts all around.
How many self-portraits and portraits emerge
from the face every day, and how many
return? If you stay, you have left; if you come,
you are leaving. This much is the same for all time.
Not a river, a road. Yet Mr Old
and Mr Serious, Mr Nostril and Anonymous
are walking by the stream, which speaks with each one
of their uninterchangeable voices.
Reader, great grandmother, grandfather, friend,
please come here this minute and speak to me,
as the trees do, as the wind does, if you also
have something, as they do, to say.
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