They say the Master read a lot
In secret, silence, solitude.
And so, they say, his haiku’s not
Originally virginal.
They point at eighteen thousand lines,
And, shrugging, claim they cannot know
If in the cherry-blossomed snow,
The Master buried evidence.
From where I see, the Master saved
(If at all he plagiarized)
The poetry that no one cared
To keep so deeply memorized.
And if you ask me who he was:
A voracious reader, sure.
Avaricious writer, more,
Who pries into his present tense
And pays the price of making sense
To pilfer moments that comprise
The prize of living daily lives.
Minakhi Misra 