June 2018
NOTE: I know that graduation usually looks forward into the future, but it's also about the shape of the past. In some ways this poem is about my graduation from psychotherapy. My analyst had a stroke, which forced her to close her practice. In the absence of her life as an analyst, she threw herself into painting--her life saved by art. Through a rather wild set of circumstances we reconnected, and I found myself visiting small museums with her. This poem takes place at the Asia Society in New York City. It is the last poem in The Analyst, a whole book of poems that details this story and the process of psychoanalysis itself, out in paperback this summer from W.W. Norton and Company. It originally appeared in the Canadian journal, Contemporary Verse 2.
Mandala in the Making
at the Asia Society
Three Tibetan monks make a sand painting
(under spotlights) in a reverential hush,
the circular world before them everything:
a cosmos, a brain, a divine palace lush
with lotuses and pagodas in children’s
paintbox colors. “Excuse me, my friend is
recovering from an accident. She’s a …
painter. May we ask you some questions?”
(Have I introduced you, my former analyst,
as my painter-friend?) You point with your cane
to the mandala-in-sand and ask, “Three
artists? How do they decide who does what?”
“He’s the boss!” One monk points to the other.
The boss beams above the bowls and brass funnel
he wields like a wand. When they’re done,
they’ll brush it all away. You can’t believe it.
Nothing stays, (including the memory you’ve lost).
What lasts? The pattern the monks have
memorized. Their burnt-down temple re-
turns as this circular core.
Only when
something’s over can its shape materialize.
Mandala in the Making
at the Asia Society
Three Tibetan monks make a sand painting
(under spotlights) in a reverential hush,
the circular world before them everything:
a cosmos, a brain, a divine palace lush
with lotuses and pagodas in children’s
paintbox colors. “Excuse me, my friend is
recovering from an accident. She’s a …
painter. May we ask you some questions?”
(Have I introduced you, my former analyst,
as my painter-friend?) You point with your cane
to the mandala-in-sand and ask, “Three
artists? How do they decide who does what?”
“He’s the boss!” One monk points to the other.
The boss beams above the bowls and brass funnel
he wields like a wand. When they’re done,
they’ll brush it all away. You can’t believe it.
Nothing stays, (including the memory you’ve lost).
What lasts? The pattern the monks have
memorized. Their burnt-down temple re-
turns as this circular core.
Only when
something’s over can its shape materialize.
© 2018 Molly Peacock
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