Gedicht

For Shitoku

“What is the Buddha”
I sometimes fondly ask:
Three chin of fax?
The dried-up shit-stick?
Or the cypress in the yard?

(That heavy yellow flaxen robe
once given to me by the governor
of a distant Chinese province
is tattered now and torn…)

“What is the Buddha?”
I shall tell you, O my son,
when you have swallowed up
the glittering Western Ocean
in a single gulp.

Cool rain in the month of June.

Namu Amida Butsu

Marcus Cumberlege,

15th June, 1991

					Ekō 50
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