Song for Putting Aside Anger by Stephen Dobyns   Four walls open to the sky: you are in a small prison. There is no door. You are here for hatred, theft; it doesn’t matter. You might have been here all your life. You might have come yesterday. It feels like your entire life. It feels like your friends have all died. You imagine their bodies in a white room. Perhaps you killed them. Your throat is too small for your hatred. You sit sifting dirt through your fingers. You say it is your heart: a dry sand, an encumbrance. You wish it were a red bird in the blue sky above you.   In the hills above you, a dozen monks hurry along a road toward a mountain. They wear blue robes. They play flutes and small cymbals. In the midst of four walls, you listen to the high notes of the flutes, the chime of the cymbals. The sounds turn, spin together in the air around you, weaving together into a thin rope. Having found it, you must trust it. This is how you put aside anger: pulling yourself up, hand over hand. __________ “Song for Putting Aside Anger” by STEPHEN DOBYNS.   Photograph: Komusō monks (“monks of emptiness”) walking the walk. They wear baskets (tengai) over their heads to suppress their egos.