A Bardo Prayer - Kate Dougherty

[Larry Robinson]

A Bardo Prayer 

                             for Judith Tannenbaum

What is Bardo
for the heart/mind 
of a Bodhisattva?

Nothing but presence
in the face of suffering?
Nothing but presence
in the face of pleasure?
Vestiges of desire, witnessed
evaporate
into never was?

Let it come
you say,
let it come

This last lifetime
you opened to Darkness 
– came Grief
stooped under her blue shawl.
You bowed 
then opened 
her door 
– came the Abandoned;
a chorus slowly shuffling 
in a counterclockwise circle
and facing each one
you watched Grief weave in and out
keening.

You bid them come.
You did not turn aside.
Bearing witness
you taught them 
poems of witness.
You did not step in 
edit, revise or manage.

Single voices
stepped out of the shadows
into the light 
and in their own voice
in their own words
read their poems out loud:
refugees, prisoners, students; 
those systematically tossed aside;
mothers and children
and fathers, homeless,
lost.

All was seen.
All was heard.

As the music you once loved
for solace and guidance 
streamed from your favorite
New Orleans station 
so too may this prayer
permeate the dream.

Walk on now 
through the hearts’ conundrums,
the horrors, the honors,
with that long-distance view
you cultivated 
and so treasured.
Be now 
ultimate height and depth.
Be presence.

Always alert to seductions’
hooks and lures:
Fanfare, bread and circus,
the easy word, lulling
happy endings offering
to buffer it all -
may you pass each one
once more.

World of beauty yes,
alive fully
fully ravaged 
open to all contradiction.

Let Grief, Fear, Hope come.
Let them come.
Let them go.

Is your last choice
total surrender 
or will you desire
return
to face us again?

Brave Heart know this,
your work, your love,
your passion, your delight
continues on this earth
as a beacon in the darkest dark,
as the dark in the blinding light.

	- Kate Dougherty


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