Originally published in Collected Poems in the section ‘Riverbus’, this new version appears in Ballads, Two (2nd edition)

Sitting Still

The sanctuary crumbled, sunk on a jungle hill.
Beside the toppled shrine
where vines and ivy drank the dregs of mortar out
of courses laid by the long-dead devout,
a seeker whose beard was no longer short
nor altogether unmingled with white
sat sunk in thought
one moonless night.
In his eyes the embers shine,
and still he sits, still.

He stayed and stared, and sat to meditate his fill,
attending on his heart.
An old grey ass, seeing him at noon, shook his ears.
A young red dog came too and shook his ears.
A girl sent out for kindling sticks went back
and told her kin a saint was in that place
to which the track
was a faint trace.
No look nor sound makes him start,
and still he sits, still.

Believing one who heard the voice and sought the will
and loved the works of good
could not but bring them good, they brought the hermit food,
cleared somewhat the wreck around his solitude,
and here and there set stone once more on stone.
With stars going over his thinning head
and ten years flown,
next to his shed
the temple rose in the wood.
And still he sits, still.

The apes, the monkeys chatter; parrots, peacocks shrill;
lamps of magnolia bloom
and shatter, and shake their pale flames down on the grass
of the springtime that saw that seeker pass.
Then village visitors kindled his pyre
from the same small fire they fed for him once,
little watch-fire.
They made of bronze
a likeness above his tomb,
and still he sits, still.

John Gibbens

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