1958–2016
After Reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The hungry ghosts are ghosts whose throats
stretch for miles, a pinprick wide,
so they can drink and drink and are never sated.
Every grain of sand is gargantuan
and water goes down thick as bile.
I don’t know how many births it takes to get
reborn as not the flower but the scent.
To be allowed to exist as air (a prayer
to whom?) — dear whom:
the weight of being is too much.
Victor Feguer, for his final meal,
asked for an olive with a pit
so that a tree might sprout from him.
It went down hard, but now the murderer is comfort.
He is a shady spot in the potter’s field.
But it might be painful to be a tree,
to stand so long with your arms up.
You might prefer to be a rock
(if you can wear that heavy cloak).
In Bamiyan, the limestone Buddhas stood
as tall as minor mountains, each one carved
in its own alcove. When their heads
eroded over time, the swallows
built nests from their dust,
even after zealots blew them up.
Now the swallows wheel in empty alcoves,
their mouths full of ancient rubble.
Each hungry ghost hawks up his pebble
so he can breathe. And the dead
multiply under the olive tree.