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Charles Fishman Bishnupada Ray Geraldine Green Rob Frail Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan Back to Issue 47_48 Back to Front Page |
Issue 47/48 : January - June 2010 : Volume 12 No 3/4
The Buddhist Spun For Tom Cox The Buddhist spun his prayer- wheel as we walked in town. The sound was remote, as if a small waterfall dripped from the sky but in a different galaxy. He spun the wheel and walked through pools of light under the appalling stars. It was a night torn from the Book of Death and Sorrow, which had been written in the blood of memory: a night illuminated by six million cries turned molten, for the lava of the past flowed freely. The Buddhist spun his golden wheel and souls wept in the humming darkness, so hungry were they for the food of compassion, so thirsty were they for the nectar of understanding. Desire of Angels For L.S. No birth without blood no angels without torn wings without cries of desolation ripped from their hearts No blood without thought— that green fire bursting from a trillion stalks from the galaxy of torches No love without death no death without music no birth without blood pulsing at the temples No chord without fingers no birth without pain no faith without words blazing in darkness Beginning with a Line by Kao Shih All night long the hour-drums shake their chilly booming Stars darken the sky and on Earth time suddenly wakens until all the lamps on the planet are blazing All day long, light is a music playing beneath the heavens where only silence listens * * All night, a monk sits on a beach in the dazzle of that unheard symphony and gazes with closed eyes as the hour-drums tremble to morning Perhaps he’s a god who forever is mourning all that has been that will be all that is missing If only we knew the world where his shut eyes gaze If only the sky wasn’t closed to us we, too, might sit in the shelter of chilly booming while words crash and burn we, too, might turn with this monk who now awakens—sunlit and dazed— as if he’s just swum here from heaven. New York |