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Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto Only in the cloister Could such a garden thrive, a soil where nature     Flowers in spiritual dryness, Drawing an interior nurture     From sand and rock. Where the labyrinth of illusion     No longer entangles the senses Enmeshing vision in delusive lusters; Where the lust of the eyes is silenced And desire of forms, and names of forms,     Move to no visible end. Those who planted here Sowed no ephemeral seed For the seasonal tempests to scatter, But the silent root that ripens in detachment,     Flowers in renunciation. Gardeners of eternity, Those who planted here     Framed the garden in the image of a desert     And the desert in the image of a sea -- Then shrunk the seas to the mind's salt and, tasting,     Dissolved all thought away. On these rocks no water breaks. Without attrition Tides and currents in this ocean rest and revolve     In a void of sound, vortex of sand; perpetual Circles enmesh and paralyzed sea and air: The effigy of time and measure     Purged of time and measure Becalmed on this dead sea of being No wave moves, no wind of desire     Flexes the indolent sail. But focussing its single eye On dreamless immobility The gulf like a burnished mirror     Regards the empty void. In this dead sea of vision the surges Merge without movement; the tides Indifferent to flood and ebb     Freeze in a flux of haste. The seagull without motion Broods on the changeless waste, Then sinks, his feathers frozen,     In a sand ocean. Frail caravels who sail This subtle gulf, morte mer, Who stir with urgent keel The fossil waters of the Great Mirage,     Or steer by lodestone to delusive ports: In this calm beyond stasis, dead calm, No compass points to the land,     No magnet of attachment     Guides the helmsman's hand Through fifteen naked rocks in raked and rhythmic sand. Here is no sea for the admirals, The whalers, the merchants of cargoes --     Those finite venturers for the temporal haven. These depths are destination, And naufrage sweeter than harbor.     Shipwreck is haven on this inland sea.   John M. Steadman   20th Century