Confusion

When confusion reigns,
the guru thinks his followers
exist because of him.

And if he weren’t imparting
his pedestrian wisdom to them,
the world would come to an end.

He never realises he exists
because his followers exist and
they would be better off without him –

Learning how to tax their brains
and think straight with reason.
But I admit because of

his spiritual foolishness,
I’m inspired to write
poems like this.

Note: Inspired by ‘Confusion’, a Bulgarian poem by
Nino Nikolov in English translation by Ewald Osers
in East European Poetry, p 425, Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1983.