JATAKA TALES

From my life as a Christian peasant
I cross my forehead and chest solemnly after kneeling.
From my life as a Sioux, “All my relations.”
From my life as a Jew, I curse God in the daylight,
then steal back at night to kneel in the moon.
From my life as dust, I call all things father
and no place home.  From my life as water,
I can rest only in the lowliest places.
From my life as a traveling salesman,
I can’t stop talking or dreaming of maps,
but from my life as a stone, I have yet to speak.
From my life as a Russian streetsweeper
I eye women carrying bags of groceries
with suspicion.  From my life as a clergyman,
all the tears of a body, more than the sea.
From my last life as rain, this endless longing
for the roots of the earth and a woman’s shadow.
And, again, from my life as dust, this muted yes,
this meaningless assent to all things.

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Originally published in Agni Online.