Two Scholars Atop A Cliff

by Brett Rutherford

Fu Bao Shi paints them:
two scholar friends
who seldom agree
on weighty matters,
friends now
and forever regardless.

One faces the painter.
Perhaps he is glad
to be seen there
facing another cliff
we can only imagine.

The other looks off
into the spiky peaks
whose forested slopes
play hide and seek
in perpetual fog.

Posed at right angles,
neither scholar sees
the same reality;
neither can know
how Fu sees them
seeing. Fu cannot see
what either scholar
perceives.

 
Black ink,
brown washes.
One nature,
many mountains.
Each man alone
in a universe
of seeing.