Dream Song 73: Karesansui, Ryoan-ji by John Berryman
(from his visit to Kyoto in 1957)

The taxi makes the vegetables fly.
‘Dozo kudasai,’ I have him wait.
Past the bright lake up into the temple,
shoes off, and
my right leg swings me left.
I do survive beside the garden I

came seven thousand mile the other way
supplied of energies all to see, to see.
Differ them photographs, plans lie:
how big it is!
austere a sea rectangular of sand by the oiled mud wall,
and the sand is not quite white: granite sand, grey,

–from nowhere can one see all the stones–
but helicopters or a Brooklyn reproduction
will fix that–

and the fifteen changeless stones in their five worlds
with a shelving of moving moss
stand me the thought of the ancient maker priest.
Elsewhere occurs–I remember–loss.
Through awes & weathers neither it increased
nor did one blow of all his stone & sand thought die.

Photo by John Dougill

For a commentary on this poem, see the first page of a JSTOR article by Jack V. Barbera, first published in Modern Language Studies, vol 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1984). Those with access to JSTOR can of course see the whole article. (For an account of 1950s Kyoto, see this account by Hans Brinckmann.)