Footless
From the peak to the plain,
and from the plain I shall rise
A footless bird.
No earth shall claim me, no root shall bind me.
Born of motion, my rest is the wind.
I have cast off the crown of stone,
broken the chain of soil,
and made my throne in the hollow sky.
Below, the world turns slow and heavy
its sons chained by hunger,
its daughters by sorrow.
But I
I am the silence between storms,
the shadow that leaves no mark,
the eye that never closes,
the dream that never wakes.
Seek me, and you will find only yourself
for I am not seen, but known;
not touched, but felt.
And when I fall,
it will not be to earth,
but into the hearts of those who remember how to rise.
Yet even I, who have escaped the dust,
know the weight of blood and breath.
For beneath the wind and stars,
the same law binds all who live:
king or pig, each bleeds, each falls, each fades.
To live is to take, to die is to give.
The sky remembers neither.
By Daozuchi
D