In the mid-60s, the Cultural Revolution led to the closure of temples and the destruction of god statues. Some were secretly saved by the local people and hidden away. This poem is about one such god, Qingshui Zushi, the Ancient Master of the Clear Stream in the Penglai Valley of Anxi county in Fujian, China.
In the mid-80s when things began to open up again, people started trying to hold rituals and processions. At first the priests were arrested, but the processions carried on, their sons stepping in to fill their places. It took many years before the old god statues were brought out and set on their altars.
This poem was born in the shimmering wake of a procession descending from a high mountain temple into the long valley where the many villages lie. Hundreds of house lamps lit up in the darkening valley below as the procession made its way down the long winding path at the beginning of night.
The Priests Have Been Arrested
Fujian 1986
Off the edge of a world
the moon sinks, a gold carp
through a sea of stars,
arcing its back into a wan smile
for the hidden god’s day.
Two hours we trek in silence
down the mountain. The road unwinds
like a shell, an ear, down to the pitch valley,
through cold fields to the flickering village,
a brick dirt farmhouse
under slender roof
that curves at the spine—
sleek stone dragon
arching head and tail into the Milky Way.
When he speaks, the eyes of our thin host
light up like kerosene lamps
behind browned glass. When he speaks,
the heavy smoke glows sudden amber,
implied freedom, desire,
memories that burn—
a life lived, and unlived.
Twenty long years has the god been hiding…
He knows I can’t understand his words
but he speaks directly,
staring into my dumb open face.
I nod my head. A rocking boat,
I smile, I float, I can’t look for long.
The unintelligible bursts with clarity.
I feel my heart break with the distances.
Far back on the mountaintop
fire crackers bloom open, explosions of risk—
prayers mutter, wands of incense curl,
tendril through fertile dark.
I see the lamps light up below
on my way down to the valley’s heart…
Waves glimmering the shore of a night sea
—a trillion phosphorous plankton—tides
of needy light
ancient, other, in awe.
Hungry ghosts hover at the cliff’s edge,
new deaths piling silently onto old,
the Heavens touched for an instant
until the weight pushes all back to earth.
If you trace your finger
along miraculous plankton sand,
constellations rise and light a way—
a star road, an instance, a glance…
A stick of incense glows brilliant
from a puff of breath,
the way the frail woman next door
grasps my hand so sweetly, pets me
each time we meet.
We can’t understand each other’s words—
I am a stranger she wants to welcome
into her wavering world
where the event of a stranger
is like a miracle of stars fallen into a sea,
an electrified heart beating, touching fragile walls,
or the words of the scarred shaman
wearing a child’s apron stained with his own blood,
saying:
The god will emerge again
unobstructed
after three more years in hiding.
Note: The b+w photos were taken in the mid-80s by Kenneth Dean and first appeared in his book, Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 1993).
