Noble Truth

I suffered from that sylvan smile

She wore that day upon the stile

Within that forest’s golden glade

Where we had sat to share the shade

 

That day of love’s first tender kiss

When I was blessed and burnt by bliss

I suffered, in her sweet caress

From shape so stunning in that dress!

 

For in my deepest heartache’s core

Her face I knew I’d see no more

Within this vale of broken dreams

Where soul-destroying, savage streams

 

They wash away with heartless flood

The lass whose love was in my blood

Just like the Buddha taught in youth:

‘To suffer is a noble truth!’

 

And here below these hallowed stones

Lies buried deep a dead man’s bones

My father’s – if you’d care to know

For him I tend the flowers that grow

 

I cultivate each tender bloom

To grace his long-neglected tomb

For when I lost him as a child

Some say it sent me weird and wild

 

That I would never come to weep

Above the earth where he did sleep

Instead, I’d while away the time

Composing love’s romantic rhyme

 

For girl I yearned for in my youth

That traitor, cruel in claw and tooth

While dad, forgotten underground

In sorrow slept without a sound