Listen, I am one of those idiot-saints who
teach by unexample.
My house is full of disciples. What I do not
do they seek.
What I have not done they praise. What I
will not do
they believe. Once in eleven days I speak.

“Wash the dishes!”—and all my monks
(simplicity has tonsured their loins) clatter
these vessels wherein meditation seethes like
a lamb
in its mother-milk and does not matter.

In my father’s wife I grew like a worm. En-
slimed
I climbed from her grave. All the rest
is a dirty search for a dry crib. My creed is
how to itch
without scratching—scratch sans itch being
too hard a test.

I sleep long and dream much. When I wake,
my apostles
are drunk on the gall of illumination. How
they find sticks for me to beat them is a won-
der. The stove kindles
neither wood nor coal; so we burn Torah, and
sometimes Tao.

On the twelfth day of the apothegmatical
month I am asked what word
“wipes out the sins of innumerable aeons.” I
reply “Your nose.”
“What does that mean?” But already I have
gone too far,
Told too much, and tremble that my secret
shows.

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