Zen

While reading Osip Mandelstam in that library
where, years ago, I first learned to read, a printout
pops out of the pages. Four books taken—
the branch, Deer Park—a theme I’ve prayed
for almost a year now: Gautama’s fires, the Wasi
wild with antlers and white tails, last week’s
collision, then that place where, visiting, I walk
often, just south of St. Clair, the ravine
dark as any waiting for light while everywhere
culture crashes down, then the dogs come,
the women and the men in love. I wonder
who is this person who would read what I
would read. I imagine a woman, lonely
for the god within that might heal each
of us, the holy and broken witnesses,
their prophetic silences gracing into tale,
song ...Franz Kafka catching the castle’s
trying twilight, some final glimmer falling
like a benevolent judgement from above,
the moment’s pogrom against the laughing face
of the Baal Shem Tov. Now, I must get back there
soon to Lawrence, the homeless friend I’ve met—
each possibility within the darkness of our
pockets. He might know: who is this friend,
silent across this Siberian page of deepening self
so true that the soul inflames and enrages
these agendas of blood and lies, or this woman
perhaps—too beautiful and distant to love,
but who might read this, weeping, and receive.