what will you will to endure, bhikkhu?

what will you remember, twenty lake days

saffron robe to keep out the cold, keep out the stares

keep off the wax moths and blinding light?

watering hole no lodging, jeta’s grove like amber

did it too keep out the cold, keep out the stares

keep at bay the thronging, night winds and downing sun?

head above water, swimming internal sounds

what feeling, of quiet acceptance and hope?

morsel against the drowning, the hungering

the putting up, creeping creatureliness that doubts

fetter of views behind the banyan trees

what conveniences after that?

a nice long bath, then their soft rice and milk?

did the sintered glass beads hurl themselves upstream

like tiny grayling, as you would have liked?

which headlong direction, gulp and dip?

did the two fishermen reel you in and upward

gold-leafed statue in another bluing river

thousand miles away, east of thousand faces later?

what blessings surface?

what trouble you go to, to care for the dying

that, glad at heart, other bhikkhus

may too remember the rescue, this refraction

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé