#559 - first notes towards the poem of the motion picture of the philosophy of table tennis - the sacred ball

14.vii.21

559

2.194

first notes towards the poem of the motion picture

of the philosophy of table tennis

 

the sacred ball

 

we praise

by play

and so invoke

 

flim flam

ping pang qiu

takkyu

 

the holy knock and bounce –

in arc and tangent

out of palm

flat, above, behind

 

rubber and timber

celluloid, stone

 

imagine that white line run to infinity

it is your right to serve from there

orb at a time

and spin

 

this is a conversation – no words

(missed missive – sometimes a hole in the bat)

 

sounds of the surfaces –

a diminuendo

like water on its way

 

whiff whaff

and pom pom

 

know this is the passage of time

 

can there have been our kind

lacking the ritual?

I won’t believe the hundred years

but ‘gossamer’ was something

a Yellow Emperor knew  

 

the ball from the machine is not the same

though this may point to civilization

 

it is what time sounds like

parted from the clock

 

the I Ching may be divined by lottery of balls

 

proof of respect

humble we are to bend, pick up, return

 

all in contemplation

this is the passage from time

 

it is a pointed staring

and a come back match point

 

stonewall so  

 

no sphere is perfectly round

nor tearfall skip

we – two, four suns

take for oscillation turns

and make the moment long

 

that feeling of travel is love

all else is left to time

 

the scratch of paper and the mystery of bills

so much forgets itself!

 

to – fro

these little flights of freedom

where what goes up must…

 

sometimes in the garden

call this for the rain

(an otherworldly falling else)

 

as globed, or like the tree in fruit

 

an all week chimney of the woods

keep an eye thereon

 

everything up

in the breath between

questions unanswered

questions unasked

 

each with its dawn and dusk

seasons turning

 

worlds up in the air these are