Temple of Snow

by A A Marcoff


I left that place so long ago, so long, so long ago: the years have passed into the atomic, like consciousness, like time itself: snow falls into the moment: memory is light: white...


one dark evening, I walked through snow in the Taishakuten Temple, and spoke to a man I knew, an older man, long dead: he showed me an effigy, stone, of a human being, and a ladle and holy water, and he told me you were supposed to pour water over this figure to purify yourself, to be whole: the old wooden rooftops curved and sloped into the mind: that seemed to me to be pure Japan, a dimension into which I poured myself, my entire being, my life: the temple was a place of lanterns and stone and snow falling in flakes like snow-light, or nothingness:

            snow falls
            in the temple grounds
            like moonlight
            the temple
            of dreams            


Japan flows, the conductor, conductor of shadows and fire, conductor of dreams and the past: it appears as a stage from a Noh drama, all laden with snow and show and the shadow of snow, and those masks that glow with the mystery of being...


the snow still falls today – the snow of memory and moment: I am what I have become: I walk with swans as they glide on the river: I walk with their wings, their light, their presence on the mystic waters: 


​            swans appear
            from a white mist
            merging
            with time
            beautiful


I have at last become myself, and go with time, with worlds, with the knowledge of that now, consecutive as light and moment, authentic with memory: Japan is with me still, the snow my space and reality, my meditation, my milieu, my song: Japan was the weather of experience and the catalyst of dreams, and I walk in that temple to this day, in the years that have become those moments of snow: 


            winter light
            I see the world
            for what it is
            snow falls
            like memory​

I am metamorphosis, and my existence is now and poem and river and flame, and these swans pass by in a philosophy of wing: the landscape takes on the shape of snow: I am walking into snow now, and go like a pilgrim into the flow...
​

Tony (A A) Marcoff is an Anglo-Russian poet, born in Iran, who has lived in Africa, Iran, France and Japan. His tanka prose has appeared in magazines in the UK and also in 'Atlas Poetica' in the USA. Individual tanka are now being published in 'GUSTS' (Canada) and 'Ribbons' (USA) as well as the in the UK. Recent books include 'quiet gospel: a world of light' and 'the song of the sun'.  He lives in the beautiful Mole Valley in south-east England, just near the river that still inspires him.
​

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