FIRST POEM
this thread of continuous stream,
mountain monastery’s hymn-air timbres the temple bell’s chafe
straits, unbelittled, stretched out sky-ness
hunting the self of the self
I feed these marigolds to the ocean, flower and wood for pyres, the smudge of distance
my duty is to misconceive, to abort
to recite
the cadence of the ocean
migrating words read the wave-wrinkles like an ancient script- & understand
every weakness—and sacrifice—is unaccompanied
this the icon’s last dawn-
not a clean fish-gasp of death but
the thief-step of the hours, rebirths
the seam of death and deaths-
SECOND POEM
the buddha-suicides
each of a hundred and one buddha-names on grains of rice,
sugar for the dead,
each time rebuilt each time destroyed bone by bone
(-this temple’s wood is made of bone-)
you cannot find god with candles in a cave,
the ghost is a renunciant of the grave, the idol of the nave-
a forest in a grain of rice, camphor in a fold of palm-
(who is this that vowed destruction- this king or that other one, or that other one’s son)
did one forget to tell you that the war was over/ before you were born.
one the mute corpse, the other the loquacity of meaning-
bodies of your fore-mothers hang upside down in the square near the temple
so obscure must be this idol’s gifts-
for everything happened first here long ago many times over&over
alone in the night’s rain in the bullock cart in a landscape moving unappeasing/
into
where there was a tribe & order & way of life now there are grain merchants with a giant
plaque commemorating the tribe and the way of life & order
as one goes further into the watercolor’s mountains one gets nearer the goats of the valley
where the gray rain toils with the conversation and the chanting-
mnemonic-mnemonic of rain water patter, the
inner of the this too-intimate hour
where what is unsaid is more -
prints of camphored flame, verse breathed on fire
across the temple’s inner court the old man in the bus behind me has the whites of trachoma across his eyes. /
he closes them & counts the rain
THIRD POEM
no more buddhas-
sitting upside down speeding down-
ward underwater deep in emerald, miniature
legs scissoring a blemished dream-grain
shearing the liquour-ous surface, scattering, fishworm eyes these
six arms limp, unwaving, aniconic, brain lost in some damp interior
gut no myth nor metaphor nor language no
art can save this undeft,
clumsy enlightenment, this wakening
FOURTH POEM
kettledrums and wrestler elephant and elephant keeper
tighten your waistband fasten your curly locks
(voice deep from the throat of clouds)
“I will send you to the home of death”
sovereign of elephants, seized (him) by his trunk
--- slipping the hold darting between pillars of feet
the elephant smells the sweat, he slips free
grasping him by his tail as an eagle a snake dodging
left-right midst twirl of hips as boy with calf
then suddenly forward Wham on the head
and still more feints and more and hits.
by. now. furious gashed
elephant
a final gore with its tusklips blood phlegmed yellow each separate tooth
goaded.
but he lifts him by the trunk hurls him to the ground stepping like a lion he tears the tusk
& then also breaks the skull of the elephant keeper.
holding tusk as ripened fingernail aloft as trophy he enters,
rut and further elephant fluid on his muscle
lotus-faced
FIFTH POEM
this skull collapses in the palms to golddust
this word is not worth the breath it consumes.
only a handful of earth is needed
to cover this corpse ( & there are mountains all around)
empty desert cisterns lie piled high in mangle
(I dig graves for one, two, seven … but how many?)
(6 months naked in the desert, walking behind the horses)
(in abandoned railway quays and yards, closeted with the gun’s machine fire)
empire is yet warm in its ash
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