Buddha by Brian McCabe

Title: Buddha
Author: Brian McCabe
Number: 22/100
Allocated postcode: EH9

Buddha

I met the Buddha in Edinburgh
hunkered in a doorway in the West Bow
a can of Carlsberg in his hand.

Around him shops, cops and dogs
were doing their miserable business.
He was doing his:

with a hand as black as a tenement
he wiped his oracular mouth,
growled his simple teachings:

Fuck-all point. Fuck-all point.
Lost the lot. Lost the lot.
Guid riddance. Guid riddance.

And he watched me, the nothing I was
as I passed. He watches me still
crouched in a doorway in my mind

in that inelegant, Scottish half-lotus,
the void of the afternoon
in the void of his eyes.

From the prolific Simon Jackson, playwright, poet, filmmaker and musician.