Aug
14th
Thu
14th
A Late Dessert
I attended a talk describing the recent discovery, reconstruction and translation of the Gandhara Scrolls, the oldest surviving Buddhist texts. While ruminating on their temporal scope and import, this began to form in my mind. I waited to harvest it, hoping that it would ripen, but finally picked it anyway, knowing that further verse wouldn’t grow until I did. When a friend stipulated that a fragment can be seen as finished, I had a strong sense of what she meant. Perhaps it is an appropriate parallel that this verse is fragmentary, as are the texts themselves.
A Late Dessert
like a poem sitting
in someone’s heart
for ten thousand years
an ancient gift
always there but
previously unnoticed
coming from a precursor
into consciousness
like a sacrament
to be decoded
by anxious lips
after untold millennia
an almost invisible tear
frozen timelessly
in the corner of the Buddha’s eye.
like a poem sitting
in someone’s heart
for ten thousand years
an ancient gift
always there but
previously unnoticed
coming from a precursor
into consciousness
like a sacrament
to be decoded
by anxious lips
after untold millennia
an almost invisible tear
frozen timelessly
in the corner of the Buddha’s eye.
