Friday, April 12, 2019

The Red of Bagan

Temples pierce the sky
Wherever the eye can go
Above the grandmother tear beans of mesquite,
And each one has a caretaker to sweep out the dust
And each one has a buddha inside in the middle
With still another variation on compassion.
It's in the flesh here how they stay
Until all of us are enlightened,
Though there are no cemeteries here to keep them
From the next unique incarnation.

These pagodas have withstood the warlords
And the earthquakes, all encroachments of the material
On the things of this impermanent earth
But more importantly they survived the guilt
Of Thumbula who had them built,
And why he did it:
The rage that calls our compassion
Like singing to prayer.