SOBS: Poetry: Poems by Robert Klein Engler

King Lear for Buddhists by Robert Klein Engler

How frail are the tethers that hold us to the world.
Isn't it all just words? "Mother." "Father." "Yours."
"Mine." "I am King!" We see no cuffs nor ropes,
yet are held in graves nevertheless. And those words
that come from the well of our innermost vacuity,
"I love you!" what kind of glue is that? The silence
of books, a vagabond melody, the dew of youth,
what rivets these to light? Who waves the perfume
of desire across the air like a gilded veil? Where
is he, so we may nail him to our bed? Where?
Why he is locked likewise in tethers wrung by hand.
Perhaps tears, pressed from the molecules of a razor,
eat through this bondage, but even then, like brandishing
sabers in the fog, they slash and mend all at once.

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