ISSUE 38
February 2008

Eric Reymond

 

Eric Reymond is a lecturer of Northwest Semitic Languages at the University of Michigan. His professional research concerns ancient poetry and literary expression, especially in ancient Semitic languages like Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. His book on the subject of post-biblical Hebrew poetry, Innovations in Hebrew Poetry: Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach (Society of Biblical Literature), was published in 2004. His creative work has appeared in the The Portland Review, the New Orleans Review, Red River Review, Poems Niederngasse, and in the Cimarron Review.
The Buddha's Smile


was never so broad or so jade

as when we stopped to take off our sneakers
and gently pile them among dime-thin sandals
and slippers of a thousand thousand pilgrims.

We had been warned that he could not
be purchased for all our happy money.

What could we offer him?

He had been gold before, after all,
and bronze and copper,
and stone ten thousand times.

 

 

Eric Reymond: Poetry
Copyright ©2008 The Cortland Review Issue 38The Cortland Review