The Heartbreak of Desire

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• The Heartbreak of Desire
• E. Ethelbert Miller (bio)

In 2001, Red Dragonfly Press published my book Buddha Weeping in Winter. This collection was an outgrowth of my interest in Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist, but perhaps I am a Buddhist at heart. What motivates and guides me is not a doctrine or sacred text but a way of looking at the world, a way of acknowledging life in living things, a way of knowing that everything begins with a way of questioning. Poets are not philosophers, but their troubling minds often struggle to translate beauty into words. Where does such beauty come from? How does one know that what one sees is real? And after turning away from beauty, how does one embrace the waves of ugliness in the world? How does one look beyond the horizon and the shore? How does a poet write of love after suffering the heartbreak of desire and the disappointment in social movements that fail?

I was beginning the decade of my fifties back in 2001. For thirty years I had been reading books about Sufism, Eastern religions, and Zen Buddhism. In 1970, Reginald Hudgins, my college roommate at Howard University, returned from Philadelphia at the start of the second semester with a small flute and a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Where he had once burned incense to cover the smell of reefer, he now burn sandalwood, frankincense, and myrrh and took on a more contemplative demeanor. It might have been called meditation if he had closed his eyes. A shared space in a college dorm can affect your life more than a lecture or science lab. Reggie's interest in Eastern philosophy renewed my interest in religion. I never told my mother I wanted to follow in my older brother Richard's footsteps. Didn't he become a Trappist monk? Did he not leave behind his Thomas Merton books in the hallway closet? Oh, I was always opening the doors to closets and looking to see what was hidden in the dark. Oh, the wonder of it all when I closed my eyes and said my prayers. Who or what was I praying to, and did I dare?

Around 1970, I was searching for something while deciding to become a [End Page 50] writer. I was wrestling with trying to determine the difference between loneliness and solitude. How often did I find myself in a crowded space sitting by myself? My first poems were love poems and primarily poems of desire, word sketches from across the room. I was not a social person. I avoided parties and dancing. I was bookish and wore glasses. I was skinny, or what a kind person might consider lanky. I spent time thinking about the meaning of life and the existence of God. I had read in Time magazine that God was dead. So I feared the possibility of another funeral in Brooklyn and a long trip from the Bronx to a neighborhood of Hasidic Jews and West Indians. Even when traveling on the subway with my family I found myself sitting next to my mother, counting the station stops, having no knowledge of where I was going. Maybe I was just a "baby Buddha" waiting for life to begin, waiting for words to find me and say I was a poet. If a tree grew in Brooklyn, did it mean I had to sit under it? Did I have to wait for enlightenment? I was on Howard's campus listening to Reggie blowing into his brown wooden flute. One night I rose from my bed and did a little "monk dance." I wanted someone to call me Thelonius.

Buddha Weeping in Winter was a small book, both in size and print run. The title poem was published in the February 2000 issue of Code magazine. Code was a short-lived, beautiful publication edited by Quincy Troupe. Troupe presented my poem in such a way that my mouth fell open when I opened the journal. Troupe gave my poem a full page, and on the page was a photo of what I would learn was a weeping Buddha. I had had no image of this Buddha...