The Buddha, in Boston


The best Buddhas blaze, inert, in Boston;
they shine like babies in a bath
because Bostonians are bitter
and Buddhas revile the bile around them,
comfy in their sandstone longeurs.
Vividly I see
and viciously I listen
to suburbanites on the bus who babble
horoscope wisdom:
Help a friend in need.
Your strength is your weakness.

Elsewhere, all is excellence,
and a tray of Nabeshima porcelain
has been sent abroad under sails of cinnabar,
attended by nervy Siva’s
flitting haze of twenty-seven hands.
Heroism is not action.
Yet it still could be possible,
even in Attleboro,
as the revenge of precision.