EVEN
BODHISATTVA’S CRY!
That pain you
feel, belongs to all the world.
Your heart of
balance lets it all unfold.
But all I want
to do is flee your tears-
Sometimes I damn
and curse their flow.
Funny little
balls of coloured glass
Running down
your excellent ascetic cheeks.
Little liquid
rosaries that run
Me to the
shallows of my deepest fears.
And summer
breathes out its last fair light,
While clumping
wounds of roses bend
like hot sacks
of heavy days.
We’ll stumble to
some quietly cunning plan.
Sit with next
year’s seedlings, stirring under-earth.
Just one thing
I’m sure I know-
That even
bodhisattvas cry.
We shivered
through a tunnel (known as ‘pain’),
And quickly saw
there was no other way.
We tried going
over- under- round,
But in our
hearts we knew the way was-through;
Because, you
know, we have to feel, to heal.
Why are we so
frightened to feel?
Perhaps because
to feel is to be real.
The swallows
soon will fly away,
Over the
dreaming seas,
Over the seas of
sapphire blue,
To somewhere we
have been-
Somewhere south
of here and warm;
A spine of
shifting sands,
And palm trees
by an ocean.
We’ll live there
by the lovely rolling waves.
They’ll wash
away my precious pain
I carry, like a
nail in my heart.
I’ve nursed it
to its present state of rust.
Am I pleased
that it defines me thus?
Shapes a new
identity of noble, glorious suffering.
But even
bodhisattva’s cry my love.
They shriek and
howl before they dance then laugh
Long and loud
into the rising beat.
They do not fear
the ownership of pain
Or to lose
themselves in ecstasy.
They flow-do not
present rigidity
To memory or
fear the future’s flow
They are here,
entire, as you are dear
Old soul;
cradled like a baby in a broken crib.
With love so
strong it cracks the flags;
Creates a new
identity of you, and me.
The swallows
soon will fly away.
Already autumn
frowns upon the leaves-
Frowning,
flowing, in the reddening winds
Blowing
dust-devils through the ruins of days;
We leave them
though we rim them round with longing.
But even
bodhisattva’s cry to see the glowering darkness.
‘No! No!’ they
shout, ‘this cannot ever be!
The gods would
not allow such pain!
The gentle
goddess would prevent…’
I’ll tell you
now-the gods have lost their power!
And even if they
had it, they’d be bored!
That goddess is
in pieces! How can she
Spin it with the
skein of gold she found
Lying like
broken driftwood on the beach?
She’s lying in
state! In thrall to survival.
You think she’ll
weave some way of miracles?
Some shining path
of undisputed love
Woven out of
spinning hymns?
No? Then just live it out; suffer, love and die
Within the
circle of the ever-rolling wave.
And let the
brilliant bodhisattvas cry
For us. Cry out their wondrous bursting hearts!
