Sand Mandala

Aug 18 2014

We make things of beauty
to signal fitness.
All art
is showing-off.

Like red-assed baboons,

flags raised
to impress potential mates.
Because big-brained chimps
are still evolution's
heedless tools.

So is all art
mere competition,
dogs pissing
hind-legs lifting
higher than him?
A pathetic man
ever hungry

for her sideways glance?

The Buddhist philosopher
spends his life
on a virtuoso work,
a beautiful object
from grains of sand.
Which then, serenely impassive
he turns
and destroys.
Determined to break
the bonds of attachment,
the weight

of self.

The  immortal artist

late departed
who bestowed beauty upon the world.

But whose venal ego

wanted more.
And the long forgotten,
who became enlightened
but left nothing behind.

And then the poet
who needs to be noticed

while meaning well.
Who sends his words
out into the world
where they cannot be destroyed;

not a singular object,
but learned
off-by-heart.

Who never gets the girl,
yet never gets over
himself.

I recently heard about this concept, and found it fascinating. With my nihilistic tendencies, such an exercise in detachment has its philosophical appeal. Of course, a poet doesn’t produce an object:  it’s hard to destroy something composed of words, and learned. We’re stuck with posterity! (Or not. After all, if a poem is never heard, does it even exist?!!)

Anyway, the poem was a great chance to write something about one of my favourite lenses through which to view human behaviour, to interpret the living world:  evolutionary biology. In other words, to say in so many words that we aren’t exempt from nature. Not to mention not nearly as smart as we think!

And also to repeat that endearingly insightful school-boy phrase for memory:  to learn “off-by heart”.

Actually, I might have skipped the entire exercise. “Sand mandala” is lovely on the tongue, and probably needs nothing more!