Ballad of the One-Eyed Buddha

First his wife gone, then daughter married
and tarried, then just him,
a one-eyed Buddha watching the shop till,
doing the same things in the same ways
and does not see how
wondering made the growth in his wife grow bigger,
how the off-eye pushed his daughter away,
and a legacy comes from what you give.

With sun skulking skyward
and heat thickening the everyday air,
he possesses himself (under his hat)
and potters down the street,
dropping money in outstretched palms
while on some level knowing
the soul he'd save would be his own.

O education: does any classroom
teach you what hollows the place beneath your eyes?
If it were a class, he would surely take it now.
Beauty exists as an ideal - touching it,
he feels, would disinegrate it to dust -
and his mouth pipe, his mother's teet,
helps puff away anything that
falls short of worldly perfection.

Of shortness, there remains multitudes
but still he prays: for love, for honor,
for richness of mind and pocket,
and nearly forgets that doing so
requires an opening of the heart.

He thinks he is crying without tears;
seeing without engaging.
The heavens open in response,
and the crags and creases on his
doubly-weathered face are awash with raindrops
that mingle with the better part of a lifetime
spent,
and the tears that have become of it.