4.
The Way of the loose-haired chieftain—walking a while, stopping a while, listening, and speaking of it all:
pouring water from the center, like from the hollow drum at the base of the flagpole,
and yet now, bearded, you:
doing truly useful work like a water bucket—by means of carrying-capacity
has this…
this particular territory—this enclave, defended by a weapon on a pole, plus its surroundings:
the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of
full to overflowing its vessel.
The deep water—
Oh! A breath, like wind through tree branches!
In all four directions,
the myriad scorpion medicine-dancing Ten Thousand
Things cut off—all matter external to oneself like cows etc.—
has this
ancestral shrine:
pushing down to a sitting position on the ground…
what it holds a basket of:
a person speaking like an axe on metal—sharpening;
removing—a blade cutting the horn from an ox…
what it holds a basket of:
unravelling—separating thin silk with a blade into disorderliness;
harmonizing as a mouth organ…
what it holds a basket of:
brilliance—that shining fire over the head of a kneeling person;
spoken of altogether with one another in integrity—like all earthly, mortal, commonplace plates…
what it holds a basket of:
leaving dusty footprints in the dirt—like a deer streaked with soil.
Concealed like sugar cane sweetness tucked in the ends of folded cloth and frozen like ice…
—Oh! A breath, like wind through tree branches!—
bearing a side-by-side personal resemblance, seems like:
“this particular territory—this enclave, defended by a weapon on a pole, plus its surroundings…”
surviving—on the plane of a baby with health issues, maybe a large head, but still sprouting.
I—we—our five mouths…
the husk of the initial protective bud casing—the sepal—but not really the true inner flower of
firing arrows from the mouth—sure
of whom the short-tailed bird speaks, the one that
has this
baby with arms wide open and legs swaddled [this word is the second part of Lâozîs name]…
likeness—like an elephant skeleton letting us imagine a living elephant—of
‘God of Heaven’—as we call our emperors, for they’re like flower sepals connecting to above with their covering of that ever-present, timeless, whole head-cloth ‘ji’ square fabric which our grown men wrap around the ‘little bird’ top knots on their heads once they’ve received their adult, public courtesy-names—
has this
being long before—like one’s dead ancestor.
The Dào of Lâozî 