Bikku under the Bodhi Tree

Bikku under the Bodhi Tree

yogi under the banyan tree

yogi under the bodhi tree

bikku under the banyan tree

waiting for release

bikku in blissful nibbhana

yogi in extinguishing moksha

Penniless poet under the tenement roof

Jazz organist under the pavement sky

Struggling novelist under the Riviera blue

Russian ballerina under the American umbrella

Apprentice painter under the Sistine Chapel

Sculptor Underground

waiting for the agent’s call

burning Anne Frank manuscripts in an air-raid fire

singular melodies drowned in the descending drone

Kafka writing without a morrow

van Gogh dabbing his tormented palette under the Arles sun

Sartre turning the Nobel Prize down for teenage girls

Siddhartha abandoning his body’s palace for the people’s pain

the common man unable to abandon his workload family

bikku under the bodhi tree

his body shrivelled under the saffron robe

his begging bowl filled by karma-earning hands

the last trichinosis-filled moksha meal

bikku rising on a thousand-petalled flower

bikku piercing through the cakras’ splendrous colours

bikku on a burning pyre

April 29, 1997

Paris

[from the collection : longhand notes (a binding of poems), 1999]