A Fifteenth-Century Zen Master

for Stephen A blind girl steps over the red staves Of a tub. Steam rising from her shoulders and hair, She walks across a dirt floor to you. I think you are not her grandfather. You watch with her a pink man Who has avoided taxes for two winters— He is being judged by roosters And has been chased this far into the countryside. Above him Burning sacks of bat dung are arranged In the purple branches of the thistle trees. The river is indifferent to him. And so are we. You tell your mistress the burning bags of shit Are like inert buddhas Dissolving in a field of merit. She giggles. A front tooth is loose. With the river bottom clear as the night air, The bargeman sings through the hungry vapors Rising now like white snakes behind him. You told his wife that Lord Buddha made wasps From yellow stalks of tobacco with a dark spit. Down in the cold bamboo a starving woman Has opened a small pig— The old moons climb from its blue glistening stomach, Or is it light From the infinitely receding sacks of shit? Master, where is the difference?