Zen in the Art of Writing Read online

  And let him run at will and make my fame.

  On which I put my name and steal his stuff,

  And all because I sneezed him forth With sweet creation's snuff.

  Did R. B. write that poem, that line, that speech?

  No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.

  His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;

  Say not my name.

  Praise other me.

  TROY

  My Troy was there, of course,

  Though people said: Not so.

  Blind Homer's dead. His ancient myth's

  No way to go. Leave off. Don't dig.

  But I then rigged some means whereby

  To seam my earthen soul or die.

  I knew my Troy.

  Folks warned this boy it was mere tale

  And nothing more.

  I bore their warning, with a smile,

  While all the while my spade

  Was delving Homer's gardened sun and shade.

  Gods! Never mind! cried friends: Dumb Homer's blind!

  How can he show you ruins that n'er were?

  I'm sure, I said. He speaks. I hear. I'm sure.

  Their advice spurned

  I dug when all their backs were turned,

  For I had learned when I was eight:

  Doom was my Fate, they said. The world would end!

  That day I panicked, thought it true,

  That you and I and they

  Would never see the light of the next day -

  Yet that day came.

  With shame I saw it come, recalled my doubt

  And wondered what those Doomsters were about?

  From that day on I kept a private joy,

  And did not let them sense

  My buried Troy;

  For if they had, what scorns,

  Derision, jokes;

  I sealed my City deep

  From all those folks;

  And, growing, dug each day. What did I find

  And given as gift by Homer old and Homer blind?

  One Troy? No, ten!

  Ten Troys? No, two times ten! Three dozen!

  And each a richer, finer, brighter cousin!

  All in my flesh and blood,

  And each one true.

  So what's this mean?

  Go dig the Troy in you

  Go NOT WITH RUINS IN YOUR MIND

  Go not with ruins in your mind

  Or beauty fails; Rome's sun is blind

  And catacomb your cold hotel!

  Where should-be heavens could-be hell.

  Beware the temblors and the flood

  That time hides fast in tourist's blood

  And shambles forth from hidden home

  At sight of lost-in-ruins Rome.

  Think on your joyless blood, take care,

  Rome's scattered bricks and bones lie there

  In every chromosome and gene

  Lie all that was, or might have been.

  All architectural tombs and thrones

  Are tossed to ruin in your bones.

  Time earthquakes there all life that grows

  And all your future darkness knows,

  Take not these inner ruins to Rome,

  A sad man wisely stays at home;

  For if your melancholy goes

  Where all is lost, then your loss grows

  And all the dark that self employs

  Will teem -so travel then with joys.

  Or else in ruins consummate

  A death that waited long and late,

  And all the burning towns of blood

  Will shake and fall from sane and good,

  And you with ruined sight will see

  A lost and ruined Rome. And thee?

  Cracked statue mended by noon's light

  Yet innerscaped with soul's midnight.

  So go not traveling with mood

  Or lack of sunlight in your blood,

  Such traveling has double cost,

  When you and empire both are lost.

  When your mind storm-drains catacomb,

  And all seems graveyard rock in RomeTourist, go not.

  Stay home.

  Stay home!

  I DIE, SO DIES THE WORLD

  Poor world that does not know its doom, the day I die.

  Two hundred million pass within my hour of passing,

  I take this continent with me into the grave.

  They are most brave, all-innocent, and do not know

  That if I sink then they are next to go.

  So in the hour of death the Good Times cheer

  While I, mad egotist, ring in their Bad New Year.

  The lands beyond my land are vast and bright,

  Yet I with one sure hand put out their light.

  I snuff Alaska, doubt Sun King's France, slit Britain's throat,

  Promote old Mother Russia out of mind with one fell blink,

  Shove China off a marble quarry brink,

  Knock far Australia down and place its stone,

  Kick Japan in my stride. Greece? quickly flown.

  I'll make it fly and fall, as will green Eire,

  Turned in my sweating dream, I'll Spain despair,

  Shoot Goya's children dead, rack Sweden's sons,

  Crack flowers and farms and towns with sunset guns.

  When my heart stops, the great Ra drowns in sleep,

  I bury all the stars in Cosmic Deep.

  So, listen, world, be warned, know honest dread.

  When I grow sick, that day your blood is dead.

  Behave yourself, I'll stick and let you live.

  But misbehave, I'll take what now I give.

  That is the end and all. Your flags are furled…

  If I am shot and dropped? So ends your world.

  DOING IS BEING

  Doing is being.

  To have done's not enough;

  To stuff yourself with doing-that's the game.

  To name yourself each hour by what's done,

  To tabulate your time at sunset's gun

  And find yourself in acts

  You could not know before the facts

  You wooed from secret self, which much needs wooing,

  So doing brings it out,

  Kills doubt by simply jumping, rushing, running

  Forth to be

  The now-discovered me.

  To not do is to die,

  Or lie about and lie about the things

  You just might do some day.

  Away with that!

  Tomorrow empty stays

  If no man plays it into being

  With his motioned way of seeing.

  Let your body lead your mind

  Blood the guide dog to the blind;

  So then practice and rehearse

  To find heart-soul's universe,

  Knowing that by moving/seeing

  Proves for all time: Doing's being!

  WE HAVE OUR ARTS So WE WON'T DIE OF TRUTH

  Know only Real? Fall dead.

  So Nietzsche said.

  We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth.

  The World is too much with us.

  The Flood stays on beyond the Forty Days.

  The sheep that graze in yonder fields are wolves.

  The clock that ticks inside your head is truly Time

  And in the night will bury you.

  The children warm in bed at dawn will leave

  And take your heart and go to worlds you do not know.

  All this being so

  We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

  And beat our blood; accept the Devil's neighborhood,

  And age and dark and cars that run us down,

  And clown with Death's-head in him

  Or skull that wears Fool's crown

  And jingles blood-rust bells and rattles groans

  To earthquake-settle attic bones late nights.

  All this, this, this, all this-too much!

  It cracks the heart! />
  And so? Find Art.

  Seize brush. Take stance. Do fancy footwork. Dance.

  Run race. Try poem. Write play.

  Milton does more than drunk God can

  To justify Man's way toward Man.

  And maundered Melville takes as task

  To find the mask beneath the mask.

  And homily by Emily D. shows dust-bin Man's anomaly.

  And Shakespeare poisons up Death's dart

  And of gravedigging hones an art.

  And Poe divining tides of blood

  Builds Ark of bone to sail the flood.

  Death, then, is painful wisdom tooth;

  With Art as forceps, pull that Truth,

  And plumb the abyss where it was

  Hid deep in dark and Time and Cause.

  Though Monarch Worm devours our heart,

  With Yorick's mouth cry, "Thanks!" to Art.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The essays in this collection originally appeared in the following publications, to whose editors and publishers thanks are due.

  "The Joy of Writing," Zen amp; the Art of Writing, Capra Chapbook Thirteen, Capra Press, 1973.

  "Run Fast, Stand Still, or The Thing at the top of the Stairs, or New Ghosts from Old Minds," How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy amp;fScience Fiction, edited by J.A. Williamson, Writers Digest Books, 1986.

  "How to Keep and Feed a Muse," The Writer, July 1961.

  "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle," An introduction to The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1980.

  "Investing Dimes: Fahrenheit 451," An introduction to Fahrenheit 451, Limited Editions Club, 1982.

  "Just This Side of Byzantium: Dandelion Wine," An introduction to Dandelion Wine, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974.

  "The Long Road to Mars," An introduction to The Martian Chronicles:

  The Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Doubleday, 1990.

  "On the Shoulders of Giants…" Originally published as the Preface to Other Worlds: Fantasy and Science Fiction Since 1939, edited by John J. Teunissen, University of Manitoba Press, 1980. Reprinted in Special Issue of MOSAIC, XIII/3-4 (Spring-Summer, 1980).

  "The Secret Mind," The Writer, November, 1965.

  "Shooting Haiku in a Barrel," Film Comment (November-December, 1982).

  "Zen in the Art of Writing," Zen amp; the Art of Writing, Capra Chapbook Thirteen, Capra Press, 1973.

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