The Arms of Bodhisatva - Tiziana Colusso

What is wisdom
if not inscribed in the natural flux of things?

At the Musée Guimet, in the hall of ancient China,
I admire with cold enthusiasm
the virtuosity
of a bodhisatva with a thousand arms rotating
in circular figures, thumb and index forming a ring,
infinite, perfect geometries
like peacocks' tails:

until into my field of sight
pass the only two, tired arms
of a young Nordic father
carrying his child and a jacket and a blanket
with an untidy, touching, essential
lack of symmetry.

In a small side room appears
a broken-armed statue of Ganesh.
Touching the crumbled marble
an age-old fracture pains me
on the left side, from the shoulder bone
down to the phantom limb of the heart.

---

Tiziana Colusso (born 1960) Italy
Translated by Brenda Porster
Source: Big Bridge