Gone, Gone

 

        Gaté  gaté.             Gone, gone

        Paragaté.                Gone beyond

        Para samgaté        Gone altogether beyond.                                                      

        Bodhi  svaha.             What an awakening! Ah. — The Heart Sutra

 

 

They are gone. Beyond.

The big wave came

           & they are gone.

 

Each morning the death toll rises.

Cannot fathom 24,000 or 39,000.

 

My own one mother in hospital.

And all the calls about her one life

           & her impending death.

Her force and power diminished

           to a stubborn throwing of a spoon

           across the room.

Can I multiply this by 84,000?

Impossible to comprehend.

 

So the one string to the one mother

           pulls at my single heart.

Mother Ocean. Mother Kali Durga

           with her necklace of skulls

           on every beach.

No one to bury them all—

           200,000 gone, completely gone.

 

See the place beyond the shore—

           the other shore of light.

All greeted. Each and every soul,

           every child, every mother,

           each man welcomed.

Two hundred million angels

           on the first breathless

           edge of beyond.

What an awakening. Ahhh!