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Children shone in the front gate and put their hands together in the demon pavilion. Then they went up red-dusted steps toward the granite stupa, where they didn't hesitate to bow with their mothers. Thick white candles with reverse swastikas and rows of images on the ascending plinths of stone. I crouched under the temple, in the cool shadow, by the outdoor Nestlé's coffee dispenser—and was aroused when two women strode by in russet hanbok "Color of the dharma's robes," said monk Sôgu suddenly beside me. I followed him down the hill and sat on a log. There was a small lake and I was calm enough at last. . .to listen to my new uncle conduct the neighborhood's Bodhisattva orchestra, seated on folding chairs in the mud beside it.
Credit
Copyright © 2002 by Walter K. Lew. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.
Author
Walter K. Lew
Walter K. Lew is a Korean American poet and scholar who is the author of Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Works (Wesleyan University Press, 2002), winner of the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry. He currently teaches at the University of Miami.
Date Published: 2002-01-01
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/4785