Ghost (or: Anatta 1)

You keep disappearing
then coming back again.
And your name, too, keeps
slipping, slipping: Spirit? Ghost?
They call you Sunyata,
but the name means nothing, absolutely
nothing, and I do not understand.

“There’s a limit to mind,” you say,
“a limit to matter—go past it,
then you’ll see.”

But what goes past, my friend?
And who is it
who does the seeing then?

Copyright © 2016 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. This poem was first printed in Life and Legends: Journal of International Literature. July 1, 2016. Used with the permission of the author.