Two Poems By Richard Collins

EPITAPH

     I’ve loved it all, and I’ll miss it when I’m gone
     My life’s been my art, and I’ve told it in my song.
	     — Eilen Jewell, “Rain Roll In”

Let me be buried where I have lived
In these pages

Where I have drowned great sorrow
In average bliss

Let me sink like an emerald
In a feculent pool

Never to rise again, neither lotus
Nor narcissus

No last rites (thanks anyway)
Only a few last rights:

Absolute confession
Without echo

Absolute repentance
Without object

Absolute embrace
Of both sin and grace

And if I am allowed to live again
Know that I will do everything

Just as it was done before only more
Honestly.

WHAT THERE IS LEFT TO DO

     Ses purs ongles très hauts dédiant leur onyx … 
     — Mallarmé

Now that the hand has come full circle
Rounding out what could not be rounded out

In time, the heart begins to accept the flaws
In the design. Along the edge of the bed’s horizon

The gloss of a fingernail is pointing out
In the West the long-since burnt-out angle 

Of the setting sun, its beautiful obsolescence
The way a knuckle stiffens to the lost

Incense of adolescence, an arthritic 
Instrument measuring absence, time’s exalted 

Abstinence, that dubious distinction won with ease
The middle-aged man in traffic whirling his arms

In alarm. What is there left to do?
Get up and dress for success though you

No longer need it? Try not to recall the missed
Rendezvous, the diminishing risk

Or your own heroic future receding 
As you advance? After all, you know all this

With digital exactness, the precise 
Number of your failures to the fraction 

Of a second chance, for you never had much luck 
At dice or dire predictions. Let it suffice

That you have outlasted the past. In time 
The heart begins to accept the flaws in the design.

Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry, which has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and a Pushcart Prize, appears in Clockhouse, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, Urthona: Buddhism and the Arts, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press). and In Search of the Hermaphrodite (Tough Poets Press, 2024).