Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

I Am

I hope that you will have a warm fire from those cut logs and that your wooden shed will keep your tools clean and safe from dirt and frost, and I begin to feel myself bodily alive again, proud to have a body like any shed or cord of cut logs. One Leaf One leaf left on a branch and not a sound of sadness or despair. One leaf left on a branch and no unhappiness. One leaf all by itself in the air and it does not speak of loneliness or death. One leaf and it spends itself in swaying mildly in the breeze. I Am I assume a Buddha-like expression in the mirror. All that is needed now is to remove the doubt lingering in my eyes, staring back at me with amusement. It could be the Buddha, all comprehending, entertained to see me wish for that which already should have been. And so I am not he, nor can ever attain to his role, but that he could shine out of my eyes in the mirror tells me he exists because I wish for that which, as Buddha, I should have become. I am, and so Buddha and I are not one, but this is for my human self to know he exists and that I exist in his eyes and am understood. 724 I Poems of the 1980s ...