Hungry Ghost by Mark Doty

I believed I would be incomplete if I did not know longing

Hungry Ghost

by Mark Doty

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Even if I understood what the teachers said,
that my desire was a thirst
for something beyond forms,

I believed I would be incomplete
if I did not know longing;

I would miss nothing,
wanted to be marked by the passage,
wanted to be inscribed.

And then I was given the key
to a wanting that won't stop as long as I live. 

Where was my gracious consent to attachment then?
I was taught to say, Please, Sir,
may I have more? Taught by craving, by the roar

in the blood rising without volition,
no place to stand that did not lean

forward, no still point. I harrowed sleep
and memory, descended into
the purely physical howl of the world,

learned my size in relation to appetite,

from which I could no more step back
than I could change the eyes

through which I read this page.
When I'm gone, will I stop wanting?

Perhaps this is also a form of immortality:
submission to a craving without boundary.

To be ravenous, and lack a mouth.

Deep Lane (W.W. Norton & Company, 2015)