Landscape with Translucent Moon

Jennifer Atkinson

Palm trees, like old pilings, tip 

 in the sand toward the Maldive Islands still. 

 The moon, 

                  a slice of green coconut, floats 

 in a sky streaky（有条纹的） with cloud. 

Eight winters after the tsunami hit, 

                                                   offshore 

 the coral reef is reinventing itself 

 by fits and starts, by hook and foot 

 and reef-wasn't-built-in-a-day 

                                            steady calm. 

 Patience comes easy to gastropods（腹足类）. 

The after-war 

 news is of atrocity（暴行）, in this like 

                                             before-, during, after-

 war news everywhere: rape, torture, mass graves, 

 the usual list, human power 

 reasserting itself 

                         on the bodies of others. 

Deep in the once 

                           jungled, once war-riven 

 Tamil north, a Buddha carved in living stone 

 still falls smiling into death, 

                                        serene these last thousand years. 

 How many wars 

 has that peace survived? 

It's said that just before he died, 

 the historical Buddha 

                                sent south to Sri Lanka 

 a slip from the original 

 enlightenment（启蒙，教化） tree at Bodh Gaya. 

That tree planted between the sites of tsunami and war 

 is now the oldest tree on earth, a living 

                                                         emblem of compassion 

 for these last two thousand years. 

It's guarded night and day at gunpoint.