Michael Ondaatje
Step
Step
The ceremonial funeral structure for a monk
made up of thambili palms, white cloth
is only a vessel, disintegrates
completely as his life.
The ending disappears,
replacing itself
with something abstract
as air, a view.
All we'll remember in the last hours
is an afternoon—a lazy lunch
then sleeping together.
Then the disarray of grief.
On the morning of a full moon
in a forest monastery
thirty women in white
meditate on the precepts of the day
until darkness.
They walk those abstract paths
their complete heart
their burning thought focused
on this step, then this step.
In the red brick dusk
of the Sacred Quadrangle,
among holy seven-storey ambitions
where the four Buddhas
of Polonnaruwa
face out to each horizon,
is a lotus pavilion.
Taller than a man
nine lotus stalks of stone
stand solitary in the grass,
pillars that once supported
the floor of another level.
(The sensuous stalk
the sacred flower)
How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.
And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air.
