Lao-Tzu’s Day Job - David Oates

[Lawrence Robinson]

Lao-Tzu’s Day Job
						...may have held the position of archive-keeper
						in one of the petty kingdoms of the time.

						Stephen Mitchell, trans., Tao Te Ching. 



Just the fact of it, the daily going there
and rummaging in records or 
waiting on the arrogance of some princeling – 

I see it as if lit by east-facing windows, and so 
growing darker as the day goes by, the aging Master 
servant of papers and pigeon holes.

Dust is the medium. Scrolls of it, stroked and looped
by the inked brushes of scribes, and maybe 
by his own hand too, chronicling

the strut and chaff of history
marked down as if it mattered,
a hundred troops here, a thousand there.

It is not his day job but the fact of it 
that liberates me. How in pauses 
of long afternoons growing shaded,

darker and darker as day outside brightens
like paradox around him, perhaps stillness 
brings his hand to another page, some notes

for writing out tonight. He knows the habits 
of the lords he serves, when they steal off for naps  
or dalliances. He sees this as his freedom.

But then, he sees everything as freedom.
He does not chafe at the meager men
with expensive silks and foolish demands.

He bends, he allows, he thrives 
like a plant of the deep forest, content
under their highnesses.

	- David Oates

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/poetrylovers/attachments/20251121/a8dad108/attachment.htm>