“You can never have enough of this world,
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its peaches, their taste so sudden a sitting man stands”
– Teddy Macker
Buddhist psychology notes that throughout our human lives, we will experience three types of desires. There is the intense, aching desire of the senses to fill our bodies up on panoplies of pleasures. There is the yearning to be and become someone special, to strive endlessly to improve ourselves into becoming someone we are not yet. And, there is the desire to numb out and drop out from it all, the desire for non-existence. In This World, Teddy Macker holds up a truth of the human experience: we will find life intoxicating; we’ll yearn to commune with and luxuriate in its beauty. We’ll also get utterly wrung out by it all and lose our way. We will look in the other direction, distract ourselves and yearn to disengage from the burdens inherent in our existence.
Posted by Guest Editor Sam Shapiro
This World
You can never have enough of this world,
its peaches, their taste so sudden a sitting man
stands, the kind hands of dusk, the boulders along the highway,
great blooms of time; you can never have enough
of wakening in a bed beside a woman you love,
her body fragrant with itself, and the nasturtium out the window
holding the dew, the sweet water of dawn,
in their frail green bowls; you can never have enough
of the poet in the prison infirmary
looking out every window just to find one single tree,
nor enough of the night-fisherman’s net dragging in stars,
the dark veils of tadpoles swimming in the ditch,
the dog sleeping in the shade of the mule,
the mule sleeping as the afternoon cools,
the boy kissing the girl’s breasts behind the water tank;
you can never have enough of this world …
and yet how we tire of it, how we raise our hand against it,
how we avoid it, as if it were a mother saying,
Look me in the eye. Just look me in the eye.
Teddy Macker
From: This World
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