Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Awkward Comparisons


This physical world has no two things alike.
Every comparison is awkwardly rough.

You can put a lion next to a man,
but the placing is hazardous to both.

Say the body is like this lamp.
It has to have a wick and oil, sleep and food.
If it doesn't get those, it will die,
and it is always burning those up, trying to die.

But where is the sun in this comparison?
It rises, and the lamp's light
mixes with the day.

Oneness, which is the true reality,
cannot be understood with lamp and sun images,
and the blurring of a plural into a unity is wrong.

No image can describe
what of our fathers and mothers,
our grandfathers and grandmothers, remains.

Language does not touch
the one who lives in both of us.