I'm going down the mountain,
Roshi, going back to searching
for the Talmud and the Crucifix
amid the sin and decadence.
I'm just so tired
of all of this inhaling and exhaling.
It's time for me to dance again,
Master, in the cafes of the night,
time to seek out the whores and the drugs
like before, when I sat with them
in their darkened corners of the evening.
Have you seen my cedar guitar, Roshi?
It's time to write a new song, time to blacken
more empty notebooks, visit with my children,
and if I have time,
have dinner with Suzanne who
is still half-crazy,
but that's why I want to be there.
And yet I will never forget
what you've taught me, my friend,
about how the music sleeps
so deeply in the sacred chant,
how expensive wine is an eraser
of memory, how moving slowly
through the kitchen
with my bowl of soup
is a solemn meditation,
how the silence of a leaf
as it falls on the snowy hillside
in December
is both scripture and salvation.
I'm going down the mountain,
Roshi,
and I'm sorry to be going,
but you're the one who told me
that when you return
to the spinning world
(with its guns and its lawyers,
its freeways and its starlets)
how purely life manifests itself
when you dive right
into the middle of it,
and how you can only start living more truly
when, once and for all, you are
done simply breathing into it.
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