BETHANY POPE

A Visit to a Mountaine Shrine

Hot scrim of fine, white dust, but at least the stench is gone1

A steaming puddle of vomit, buried on the flank of one of the Longhu Mountains.2

Reeling, from the heat and my own incipient drunkenness, and drowning in the mystic,

Spectral beauty of escarpments buried in the smoky mist (America

Holds no secrets like these) I pick up my son. We're heading to a Taoist temple on the river,

Perched high above the water, on a narrow cliff. A set of worn, marble stairs leads up,

Unwinding from the bank to the carved gates, shrines hidden by them. This land is wet from

Rain, and the ancient soil exhales mist. I'm still dizzy from drinking the

Ill-advised coconut (purchased from a roadside hawker) but you won't carry our son,

Finding him, at two, too heavy, so I stagger upwards with him, following The Way. Hot,

Yearning for water, I stumble off the path and into a cave — a cool shrine to Magu.3 Her nails Inserted into the tender skin of some pilgrim’s offering of fruit, left behind on their hajj. Now I kneel in the mud at her stone feet, asking a blessing, or maybe just faith. You

Groan, swatting mosquitos, impatient to journey up to where the tourists wait. 

1 The appearance of the Lapis at the end of the second stage is thus described. It was essential that all moisture be boiled away in order for the transformation to proceed.

2 Dragon-Tiger mountain was the birthplace of Taoism.

3 A Taoist goddess, associated with the Elixir of Life, and protector of infants, mothers, and children. She is depicted as a young woman, dressed in hemp leaves, with long, birdlike fingernails.

Bethany W Pope has won many literary awards and published several novels and collections of poetry. Nicholas Lezard, writing for The Guardian, described Bethany’s latest collection as 'poetry as salvation'.....'This harrowing collection drawn from a youth spent in an orphanage delights in language as a place of private escape.' Bethany has recently returned to the UK after spending seven years teaching in China. 

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