Even Bodhisattvas Cry!

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!