From The Commonplace Book

Abstract

from The Commonplace Book Maitreyabandhu (bio) i.m. Urgyen Sangharakshita These fitful sayings are, also, of tragedy: The serious reflection is composed Neither of comic nor tragic but of commonplace. —Wallace Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” 1.1 A pheasant kickstarts its rancorous alarmin windless hills gripped by winter’s paw:the sound of rain is like the tentativebeginnings of tumultuous applause. I rang my mother again from the weedycorner of a field near where a crop-sprayer, with rhythmic stutter, threw a wing,an angel wing, across a crop of kale.She was in France, an overnight stopoverbefore the river cruise: meals and foyers,miniature bottles of shampoo, hand soapwrapped in tissue. After her second fallmy brother bought an automatic car:a lifetime of shifting through the gears and shewas nervous again behind the wheel, drivingto Morrisons to get used to it, buyingtoilet paper and Special K. “I can’t talkfor long, love, they’re just about to call us in.”Bad reception. The stuttering angel wing.A pigeon climbed an angle of the light.Cold wind scattered the first few autumn leaves.One can accumulate as much of nothingas one likes, it will all add up to nothing.“I’d better go . . .” A car was changing downat the oak-rigged horizon and the wind [End Page 62] that had been saying serious amongthe hedges, in the treetops, then further offacross the fields, was saying (I seemed to hear it)serious . . . then serious again. 1.3 Friends reported Rainbows! Rainbows! in WhatsAppphotos on my phone, driving alwaystowards and through them with hedges running offto where the local crows creaked the skyabove our unaccommodating heads.We carried folding chairs, arranged ourselvesin rows for the possibility of warmthand then another friend, driving pastthe portaloos, stopped to open hiscar window, wave his phone and shout out Rainbows! 1.7 We should have painted rainbows as well as rain,double and triple rainbows like the onesthat greeted you after the war when you walkedbarefoot from that hill station, burning your passport,having shaven and taken robe and bowl,walking all the way from India to Hampsteadwith Christmas Humphreys muttering dirty habitsand blue films, exchanging Pali studiesfor Soho and the Diamond Sutra’s beat. 1.14 On the way up, the lift plays Handel’sOmbra mai fu (without the solo) beforethe TV dayroom and the corridor’sposter of the Beatles striding likeyoung gods towards Love, love me do.The disabled loo has laminated picturesof tulips blutacked to the tiles. My friend, [End Page 63] marooned between one thought and another,sways like sea-grass in a current he can’twithstand in front of Doris Day and JamesStewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much.A shot rings out. The man, who’s been blacked-up,whispers something, then touches Stewart’s face.Stewart’s eyes aren’t sharp enough to tiethe lost connections as Arabs shout and fightin the crowded market chase to London Heathrowwith low sun over Hounslow and seagulls parkedacross a field all facing the same way,their bonnets glaring in the fading light. [End Page 64] Maitreyabandhu Maitreyabandhu won the Keats-Shelley Prize, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and the Basil Bunting Award. His first pamphlet, The Bond, was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. His second pamphlet, Vita Brevis, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. He has published three collections with Bloodaxe Books: The Crumb Road (2013), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Yarn (2015); and After Cézanne (2019). Maitreyabandhu lives and works at the London Buddhist Centre, UK, and has been ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order for twenty-nine years. He has written three books on Buddhism published by Windhorse Publications. Copyright © 2020 Middlebury College Publications