Zhou Dunyi & the lotus flower
The other day I showed my colleague Jaime Pascual, who claims to dislike poetry, a bad poem of mine (see below), called Distance, which vaguely (distantly) echoes the comments of eleventh century Chinese philosopher Zhou Dunyi (周敦頤) about Tao Yuanming’s (陶渊明) love of lotus flowers, writing seven hundred years earlier: “The lotus flower can be only appreciated from a distance, touching one is blasphemy” (可远观而不可亵玩焉)…The lotus flower emerges from the mud unsoiled (出淤泥而不染).
Perhaps we too should learn to keep our distance as we go about our daily lives, the better to remain unsoiled, like lotus flowers, oblivious to the mud around us. Jaime said he liked the idea of my poem and I was glad he had grasped it through poetry. I am convinced that poetry alone can express things in such a way as to make us believe there is still a chance of emerging from the mud unsoiled!
The Poet Tao Yuanming (陶渊明)
DISTANCE (1)
You wander through space.
Distance annoys. Distance intrigues.
You leave one place to get to another.
And when you get there…
It’s clear you don’t like what you find.
It could have been different.
In any event, where there’s distance you want to reduce distance.
Distance is stronger than taste.
You only want to conquer distance.
That’s why you travel from origin to destination.
Distance annoys, distance intrigues.
You only want to conquer distance.
(1).
This poem was not included in my book Dibugrafías