Two poems by Zen poet Stevens Han

Soap
A white cube of soap
on the white tiles.
I rub it within my hands,
Soap is a cubic word.

Bubble it, bubble him.
It lives bubbles, iridescent.
It dies bubbles, atrophic.
I wash my face in bubbles.

Soap is lullabies, bubbles.
I am cleaned by its death.
I put down his pieces on a rack,
all whites, shards, and clams.

Death is purged by bubbles.
Bubbles grow by emptiness.
Body turns clean and tough.
Soap is a life to die as bubbles.

Lamp
Lamp must stand on a foot.
A wick man is not a foundation,
Not a root, not osmotic.

Lamp is a light in a shade,
white veil, a bamboo hat.
It can’t shoot the light up to the roof.

Lamp is deaf, mute, and dyslexic,
only click on & off on its tongue
by the wild hand, unknown.

Lamp light is His darkness.
I turn it on to see his images,
but only the roach’s light, scurried black.

Stevens Taeho Han was born in Korea and came to Canada in 2008. A Zen poet who is interested in new innovative poetics, Stevens is the editor for Poetic Direction, Poetic Reality, & Poem and World. He is the vice-president of the Korea Yeats Society and Korea East–West Comparative Literature Society and international director of Korea Creative Writing Society. He is also a literary translator. In 2009, he was short-listed as a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards.

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