The Ancient Symbol

(In Chosen's Flag)m You who blossomed early in the calm of the blushing dawn are the wild azalea We who have bloomed late in the vibrant glow of the setting sun are the chrysanthymum You, the strong gnarled gauntness are limned against the strengthening light We, the riotous cascade give luminescence to the gathering dusk But both together we symbolize the Yin and Yang of complementary attributes You are the tight retiring modest blossom We are the open flamboyant bloom You seek your strength from your ancestral roots We wax strong by stretching toward the unrestraining air But we both draw nutriment from the same maternal clay. You are the patient ones who know the future will be the past Ere headstrong man's desires find full fruition We are the impatient ones who know that chance and circumstance mesh once and nevermore prod progress But each is often proven wrong for finite minds and fateful winds Cannot winnow casual from repetitious fortune. You speak softly and with understatement Masking your true thought in kindness or pain dulling inexactitude We speak brusquely and in hyperbole masking our gentleness in urgent seeking of unclothed truth despite its starkness But in attunement we communicate in kindly comprehension. You use the silent voids between antiphonal tones to induce a mood by inderection We weave sounds in mathematic melodic pattern to soothe or stir primordial memory and tonal imagery But both sound and silence are often substitutes for words when, in communion, conception takes perception's place. You tilt your toes in pert abandon and fling your scarves with ineffable grace We stomp our country hoe-downs in hearty cadence and swing and sway as honest lovers do But such is the commonality of mood in motion that limbs bespeak a singularity of thought that plurality of tongues cannot achieve. So did the God-head envelope in the placental membrane of Cosmic Spirit, the twins of East and West And Destiny direct the Eastern Land to suckle all the Holy Leaders of our Creeds And to the Western Wind assigned the winnowing of their thoughts So is the whole world intertwined and wrapt around And Time and thought meet full circle wise And Yin and Yang merge in divergent unity And we are one. Korea, 1960m