“We don’t really know how to cook.”
“I see.”
“We are really nothing but suggestions. Our bodies end where our clothes begin. There’s nothing underneath.”
“I was wondering about that.”
“Yes, we were told to practise modesty, to make you laugh and smile, and not to bewilder you with fluids and nakedness.”
“Will this improve the evening?”
“It will. It will delight you.”
“I submit myself to your good intentions.”
They each took one of his arms, and they folded themselves against him, and pressed their heads against his chest.
“We love you.”
His tears came and they wiped them away with their colourful bandanas.
“I’m hungry.”
“So are we! Let’s go to a restaurant in Montreal, a city, we have heard, which has more restaurants per block than even Rio. We’ll go out every night, except when you don’t feel like it. Then we’ll order in.”
EVEN NOW
I did not know
how simple you are
how generous
I tried to capture you
with rhymes
and erotic
suggestions
Even now
you yawn
in my heart
bored and alone
rubbing ointments
all over your body
and touching yourself
while I tarry
ANOTHER POET
Another poet will have to say
how much I love you
I’m too busy now with the Arabian Sea
and its perverse repetitions
of white and grey
I’m tired of telling you
and so are the trees
and so are the deck chairs
Yes, I have given up a lot of things
in the last few minutes
including the great honour
of saying I love you
I’ve become thin and beautiful again
I shaved off my grandfather’s beard
I’m loose in the belt
and tight in the jowl
Crazy young beauties
still covered with the grime
of ashrams and shrines
examine their imagination
in an old man’s room
Boys change their lives
in the wake of my gait
anxious to study
elusive realities
under my hypnotic indifference
The brain of the whale
crowns the edge of the water
like a lurid sunset
but all I ever see
is you or You
or you in You
or You in you
Confusing to everyone else
but to me
total employment
I introduce
the young to the young
They dance away in misery
while I conspire
with the Arabian Sea
to create
an ugly silence
which gets the ocean
off my back
and more important
lets another poet say
how much I love you
PARDON ME
Pardon me, lords and ladies,
if I do not think of myself
as the disease.
Pardon me if I receive the Holy Spirit
without telling you about it.
Pardon me,
Commissars of the West,
if you do not think
I have suffered enough.
HER FRIEND
she doesn’t know
her friend has come
she won’t be able
to write down
anything he says
he won’t have a place
in her notebook
along with Kabir
and the Theravadins
many years later
she will remember
sitting with an old man
a curious nakedness
of thought
between them
that nakedness
that transparency
will lead her home
IT SEEMED THE BETTER WAY
It seemed the better way
When first I heard him speak
But now it’s much too late
To turn the other cheek
It sounded like the truth
It seemed the better way
You’d have to be a fool
To choose the meek today
I wonder what it was
I wonder what it meant
He seemed to touch on love
But then he touched on death
Better hold my tongue
Better learn my place
Lift my glass of blood
Try to say the Grace
THE GREAT DIVIDE
I never liked the way you loved
So devious, so dated
But still I fasted like a monk
And prayed to see you naked
I’d see you hurting everyone
A government of suffering
I’d tell myself ‘Thy Will Be Done
My will it counts for nothing’
I drank a lot I lost my job
I lived like nothing mattered
And you, you never came across
You never even answered
It was a blind and broken time
And kindness was forbidden
I guess I tried to hitch a ride
From acid to religion
But every guiding light was gone
And every good direction
The book of love I read was wrong
It had a happy ending
But when the system had been shocked
Beyond all recognition
The simple things that I’d forgot
Resumed their sweet position
I thought I saw you with a child
I thought I heard you weeping
And all the garden round you wild
And safely in your keeping
I don’t recall what happened next
I kept you at a distance
But tangled in the knot of sex
My punishment was lifted
Your remedies beneath my hand
Your fingers in my hair
The kisses on our lips began
That ended everywhere
And when I gathered up to leave
You drew me to your side
To be as Adam was to Eve
Before the Great Divide
And fastened here we cannot move
Except to one another
We spread and drown as lilies do
From nowhere to the centre
And here I cannot lift a hand
To trace the lines of beauty
But lines are traced and love is glad
To come and go so freely
And here no sin can be confessed
No sinner be forgiven
It’s written that the law must rest
Before the law is written
And here the silence is erased
The background all dismantled
Your beauty cannot be compared
No mirror here, no shadow
But now it comes, a grazing wind
Aimless and serene
It wounds me as I part your lips
It wounds us in between
And now the wars can start anew
The torture and the laughter
We cry aloud, as humans do
Before the truth, and after
I don’t know how it’s going to end
You always left that open
But oh, you are the only friend
I never thought of knowing
I AM NOW ABLE
I am now able
to sleep twenty hours a day
The remaining four
are spent
telephoning a list
of important people
in order
to say goodnight
Jikan
who was born
to make men laugh
bows his head
THE FLOW
You have been told to
“go with the flow”
but as you know
from your studies,
there is no flow,
nor is there actually
any coming or going.
These are merely
helpful concepts
for the novice monk.
You can start smoking again,
and what is called “your death”
and what is called “your life”
you can watch now
through the eyes of wisdom.
This is why
the Sages of Japan
named their cigarettes
“Hope” and “Peace”
and “Peace Light” and “Short Hope”
and “Short Hope Light.”
A NOTE TO THE CHINESE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for coming to this book. It is an honour, and a surprise, to have the frenzied thoughts of my youth expressed in Chinese characters. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the translator and the publishers in bringing this curious work to your attention. I hope you will find it useful or amusing.
When I was young, my friends and I read and admired the old Chinese poets. Our ideas of love and friendship, of wine and distance, of poetry itself, were much affected by those ancient songs. Much later, during the years when I practised as a Zen monk under the guidance of my teacher Kyozan Joshu Roshi, the thrilling sermons of Lin Chi (Rinzai) were studied every day. So you can understand, Dear Reader, how privileged I feel to be able to graze, even for a moment, and with such meagre credentials, on the outskirts of your tradition.
This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously. May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don’t like? Dip into it here and there. Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer, an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part.
Beautiful Losers was written outside, on a table set among the rocks, weeds and daisies, behind my house on Hydra, an island in the Aegean Sea. I lived there many years ago. It was a blazing hot summer. I never covered my head. What you have in your hands is more of a sunstroke than a book.
Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.
THE FAITH
The sea so deep and blind
The sun, the wild regret
The club, the wheel, the mind,
0 love, aren’t you tired yet?
The blood, the soil, the faith
These words you can’t forget
Your vow, your holy place
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
A cross on every hill
A star, a minaret
So many graves to fill
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
The sea so deep and blind
Where still the sun must set
And time itself unwind
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
HERE IT IS
Here is your crown
and your seal and rings
and here is your love
for all things
Here is your cart
your cardboard and piss
and here is your love
for all of this
May everyone live
and may everyone die
Hello, my love
and my love, Goodbye
Here is your wine
and your drunken fall
and here is your love
your love for it all
Here is your sickness
your bed and your pan
and here is your love
for the woman, the man
And here is the night
the night has begun
and here is your death
in the heart of your son
and here is the dawn
(until death do us part)
and here is your death
in your daughter’s heart
And here you are hurried
and here you are gone
and here is the love
that it’s all built upon
Here is your cross
your nails and your hill
and here is your love
that lists where it will
May everyone live
and may everyone die
Hello, my love
and my love, Goodbye
THERE FOR YOU
When it all went down
And the pain came through
I get it now
I was there for you
Don’t ask me how
I know it’s true
I get it now
I was there for you
I make my plans
Like I always do
But when I look back
I was there for you
I walk the streets
Like I used to do
And I freeze with fear
But I’m there for you
I see my life
In full review
It was never me
It was always you
You sent me here
You sent me there
Breaking things
I can’t repair
Making objects
Out of thought
Making more
By thinking not
Eating food
And drinking wine
A body that
I thought was mine
Dressed as arab
Dressed as jew
O mask of iron
I was there for you
Moods of glory
Moods so foul
The world comes through
A bloody towel
And death is old
But it’s always new
I freeze with fear
And I’m there for you
I see it clear
I always knew
It was never me
I was there for you
I was there for you
My darling one
And by your law
It all was done
Don’t ask me how
I know it’s true
I get it now
I was there for you
A PROMISE
I will never
return
the Holy Grail
to its
“rightful owners.”
REPORT TO R.S.B.
Peace did not come into my life.
My life escaped
and peace was there.
Often I bump into my life,
trying to catch its breath,
pay a bill,
or tolerate the news,
tripping as usual
over the cables
of someone’s beauty –
My little life:
so loyal,
so devoted to its obscure purposes –
And, I hasten to report,
doing fine without me.
IRVING AND ME AT THE HOSPITAL
He stood up for Nietzsche
I stood up for Christ
He stood up for victory
I stood up for less
I loved to read his verses
He loved to hear my song
We never had much interest
In who was right or wrong
His boxer’s hands were shaking
/>
He struggled with his pipe
Imperial Tobacco
Which I helped him light
– after the photo by Laszlo
BECAUSE OF A FEW SONGS
Because of a few songs
wherein I spoke of their mystery,
women have been
exceptionally kind
to my old age.
They make a secret place
in their busy lives
and they take me there.
They become naked
in their different ways
and they say,
“Look at me, Leonard
look at me one last time.”
Then they bend over the bed
and cover me up
like a baby that is shivering.
THE LETTERS
You never liked to get
The letters that I sent.
But now you’ve got the gist
Of what my letters meant.
You’re reading them again.
The ones you didn’t burn.
You press them to your lips,
My pages of concern.
I said there’d been a flood.
I said there’s nothing left.
I hoped that you would come.
I gave you my address.
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defence.
The wounded forms appear:
the loss, the full extent;
and simple kindness here,
the solitude of strength.
Book of Longing Page 9