Poetry

Dear Luang Phi,
it is 4:00a.m. And April, 3.
The tenth moon—a shut argument
begins to wind up and shy away
with stars sinking one by one
like hypothesizes.
A dark lull looms over the sleeping city.
And I sitting in this Vihara
think of Lu,
of you, Bhante!
Your wisdom, your words, your
wanderings! lost into a sty.
A saint is a projectile thrown
into ad infinitum
into an endless sky.
How comes it, then, that the parabola
turns into hyperbola.
Kung Fu! were you the one
who cared more for the human
beings than the burnt stables
unthinking of the horses, the centaurs.
Were you the one who
invented nothing, yet a transmitter.
Your disciples and descendants transmitting
a horrid hell for humanity.
A shameless dragon spitting
infernal phlegm invisible—
A choked city mews and whimpers
in a coma. The bang at Wuhan
rent apart the sky from horizon
to horizon. The Astroid 7853
has hit the pleura of April
unsinging the songs of Spring.
Bhante! You envisioned and your progeny
bartered for an autumn—all
pervading when they fall like
leaves, lone in isolation.
Ages ago, my substances—Kashyapa
Matanga, Dharmaratna met with
your shadow—Zi Gong
on the banks of Hwang Ho,
exchanging formal greetings,
perennial good and the analects.
Shadows after shadows after
lengthened under a suffocating sun
lost in the labyrinths of
all that is not Confucius.
Bhante! Could we weep together
in isolation, though for what
we together had dreamt and
been denied. A thin crack in the
South Wall Frieze of the Supreme court
is a chink in the façade of this Vihara.
Beyond this crevice, the birdling of a sun
sings in. A tear-drop from
your half-shut eyes floating
down the Yellow R, down
to Brahamputra—moists
my cheeks.
The Vihara is awakened!