Molly Peacock on Desire

Not long ago here on my blog I wrote that I wouldn't make a good Buddhist because I love desire too much. Part of me wrote that with regret because I envy the serenity and emotional/mental clarity many Buddhists seem to possess. And I felt a bit like a misfit: unlike some people, my interior life is kind of messy, cluttered, unsettled. Perhaps the clinical term for this is neurosis? Probably. After all, what's so hard about detachment, objectivity, sleeping with a Monarch butterfly or hungering without taking a bite?

For me, just about everything. I fall more into the categories of "she [who] couldn't marry well hurt and love and beautiful things" (Erica Check) or "she who [struggles to] reconcile the ill-matched threads of her life" (Rilke).

This morning, though, I discovered that I am not the only one who finds the so-called virtues of objectivity and orderliness both unattainable and, well, un-desirable. I found a fellow neurotic/artist in poet Molly Peacock. The following is from her latest collection, Cornucopia...

Why I Am Not a Buddhist
I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire. I love the things I've sought
--you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll
from my billfold--and love what I want: clothes,
houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit
equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose
a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute
desire for nut gateau is driven out by death,
but the cake on its plate has meaning,
even when love is endangered and nothing matters.
For my mother, health; for my sister, bereft,
wholeness. But why is desire suffering?
Because want leaves a world in tatters?
How else but in tatters should a world be?
A columned porch set high above a lake.
Here, take my money. A loved face in agony,
the spirit gone. Here, use my rags of love.