Ikkyu
 

Drifting, I lean

back in the bottom of the boat—

rocked in starry water.

Bull frogs thrum and groan.

Black pines ringing

the shore make lashes

for a starry eye, while everywhere

insouciant, scattered fireflies push

light out of their bodies.

A peel of moon crowns the lion.

The dragon is slain by a star.

 

One summer night, five hundred years ago,

a solitary monk drifted on Lake Biwa.  Suddenly

(he later said), many years of fitful sleep,

a life of fear and anger fell away

on hearing the midnight cry of a crow—

as the world dissolved into luminous nets of light.

 

After that, they called him Ikkyu—

One Pause—for the gap between life and death. 

He called himself Crazy Cloud, drifting

here and there.

But what he did just then

was go back to his village,

to his people, to the brothel and sweet bed of Lady Mori.

 

 

     The Lost Verse  

 

In your birthday-present aquarium

Hypostomus plecostomus

rests in the lap of the Buddha—

his body divided bow and stern,

half black, half pale tangerine,

like a yin-yang cigar,

or a half-lit submarine.

 

An algae eater, all morning

he’s been sucking the scum

from the Buddha’s body—

cleaning that great roundness,

hands and face, chest and thighs,

while Gautama sits quietly,

two feet under, without

breathing.

 

All about them shimmer

the spangled host: neon tetras,

silver angels, prayer-flag Gouramis,

rainbows, fire mouths, pearlfish,

one filter their only choir. 

 

And all the while, there at the center

old plecostomus lies

content, knowing how lost verse said:

 

Blessed is the scum of the earth

for it shall adorn the body of God.

 

          That Drink 


 

More and more things

           kindle inside,

               incandesce.   

 

More and more edges

      soften, thin,

            until all the transoms open

 

 and you see how things

          are sunk and set in light. 

                    Then the heart 

 

finds its mate

          everywhere.

                    There are streams

 

where we are going. 

            Whenever the water bottle

                        goes in the water

 

it always comes out full.

          I tell you, pretty soon, that which is inside

                    and that which is outside

           

are going to have that drink
 
          they penciled in

                    a million years ago.