The Guru

Here comes the wise man in the story of sick times,

telling you how to find the passage of satisfaction.

He is many million years old and has been walking

many thousand miles, more miles, more lengths of road

than the shrunk-up earth of these days possesses,

to find you. He has a veda from before creation

to sing you and, lo and behold, it is about you,

it means everything to you. Though they’ve made a rope

out of rough, heavy smoke, like a whale-thick hawser

for a steamer of dead star, and pulled it through you

from throat to crotch, from ear to ear, and hag-tied

your hands and feet with the ends, though each of them

has your own face molten with leprosy,

though your brain makes the sound of crowded trains

colliding in Kashmir and a stadium that roars hosanna,

it is still possible now, in the next moment, to know God.

That is, not die in confusion. But maybe, then, this guru

is too soon. Maybe he hasn’t come from far enough.

Maybe he’s still much too young. Maybe he’s never

asked himself clearly what happens when someone like you

hears that a lightning-opened living fig tree or a mountain

and a blue sky can be lived in and sets out

on the long road never moving from his realm in pain.