Add it Up

Come, even if you have broken

your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.”

― Jelaluddin Rumi
Standing on the cusp of 47 years a man
must weigh out the amalgam of his folly
his singing, his sincerity, his two-fisted sin

it must come to him now through the wind

blowing in the low canyons of Phnom Penh
high on the hill temple it comes to him

through the footfalls of women & of men, his regret

the violence that governed him, his indolence
his ignorance, his bawdy lasciviousness

how many times he should have died, & didn't

moments of truth speaking to him, he ignored
bouts of unbounded pain & shame, self-concocted

can a man who has broken his vows so many times

repented, cried out, recommitted, just to do it again
well, can he be taken to the breast & offered grace once more?

Suddenly the stories come to him, of those countless feet

that carried the Dharma from the West
men & women who fumbled their lives also
who tripped, failed, fell, tumbled to fracaso

& through annihilation became the bells

on elephants, the rushing waters, the screech
of monkeys high in the telephone cables
the roosters' scratch in dry mahogany leaves—
this ambulance siren, this far off drum
this wavering voice of a three-stringed violin

who became an insistence of a simple truth

that all the bleak blunder of our human life amounts to this:
if a man throws off his golden robes not
dwelling amid the poor in search of salvation
but he comes instead as the Dharma comes
as the river comes, as the wind comes— purely
following the path that prevails

so that instant he comes back again

circumscribing his love of lust & his lust
for oblivion—
following his journey to Be'er Shachat & back
he might sit for one second
catching clarity in the undulating echo of the bell
calling him, calling him, to fall once again
fall to his knees in prayer

Might we say the madness that possessed him

was not the counter-pulse of the Song
not the Shadow Song, sung in anathema to the Sun
but the song itself, sung in its radiance

so that, if the man finds himself

belly up in the mud
laughing between the buffalo and the bulrushes
then he must savor also the bitter aftertaste
that gives rise to so much sweetness

S.T. O'Docharty
August 3rd, 2021
Phnom Penh, Cambodia