I-2 (Home)

 

The women of the Lower East Side gnaw
hunks of bread in the alley
and speak reverently of the rivers of Egypt
and of old chariot wheels that are whirlings of fire
over plains of red rock.

One of them singing
to herself strokes
a black-eyed-susan:
her hand sinks into its massy core and comes out again
holding a golden bird.

In the Greek deli
on E. 10th
a guy in straw hat orders chopped liver.

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II-1 (Signals)

for Mehboob Khan

 

White cranes rise up out of the rice paddies.
Red sun drops behind mountains.
The raga begins.

Who has allowed the cricket armies of the moon to gather at the bases of stone wells?
Who allows the thighs of old women to turn to dust and blow away in the wind?
Who has said that at the evening meal a man will dip his fingers into a bowl of purified butter and in so doing forget the world?

The sitar guides the waters through eons of quietness . . .
Then the protozoan is born
and in the belly of the protozoan the feudal lord counts his gold.

Soon in Europe
teeth break on the bones of history,
Prime Ministers run through the streets, whispering
through half-opened doors painted with lamb’s blood
“It is alright, come out, and bring with you beakers of wine, for it is a wonderful night!”

No one needs to say what happens next
Swedenborg is denied.
The abyss in the core
of the black-eyed-susan
rushes up into the world.

In the rooms of the music: confusion.

Outside in the moonlight
the redheaded white hen,
its tongue leaping from its beak,
collapses, dead.
The villagers gather
around it and shout
"The redheaded white hen
is dead at last. At last!"
But they do not know why their excitement is so great,
or do they know, especially the mothers,
why they retreat into their houses
and with furious fingers dig in their children’s hair looking for lice.

In a field beyond the village, voices.

One says
"Horrible sores appeared on my penis."

Another says
"I cried my heart out all night. I was sick with grief."

NO ONE CAN REMEMBER EVEN ONE EUCLIDIAN THEOREM.

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II-3 (What If?)

 

Below
in the valley
a small building
silvering
in morning
light.

Or
the red bloom
of the flowering gulmohar,
the tree that does not,
no does not,
come towards us
like a man with shotgun-blasted face.

And also
the flight of white cranes
above rice paddies
in the evening
and the cows
slowly going home
along anonymous roads.

These help us for a minute to forget

What is it we want to forget?
The sun. The moon. The stars.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

Or maybe there is more.

What is the final self-sacrifice?
What if one sacrificed . . . hesitation?

                    +

The eyes have ears
and can hear whatever you say.

“I love you, I love you not.”

“What does he mean?”

Transcendence. Transcendence.
It is not wasted by spontaneously composing an ode to the Angel of Ozone
or by loving, totally, this woman’s body.
It is simply not stealing
stoneness from the stone.
not, in the dead of night, a thief,
carrying away the core of the rose . . .

Yet the rent collector in the ghetto secretly feeds steak to the rats
and in the safe of the First National Bank
they have a machine that changes straw into gold.
And the political leader ropes his wife to the bedposts
to keep her hole
always pried open! 

                    +

In the garden

deep grasses . . .

Sleeping in the afternoon
in his pre-Reformation
monastery cell

a monk dreams of tankers
bound for Africa
and of tremendous ovens out of which will come
men begging to be made into lampshades . . .

But soon in the arena
the gladiator wrestling with the black-eyed-susan
is crushed to the ground

as a ghost-audience of Roman plebeians howls . . . 

                    +

Now the river in the sunlight
and the lizard at home in the immense paradises of dust
and our fingers floating in the hair of the gods!

Once again in the chariot
Krishna speaks to Arjuna
giving him the advice
that will bring about the destruction of the whole Kshatriya race.

What is that advice?

Love. Devotion. WAR!

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III-1 (The Wordless)

 

This lily
with five white petals
and a power of expression
beyond words
does not know
or care
what it is.

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III-3 (Is)

 

Where? Where was it?

Of its own accord
the hand breaks the coconut
before the god.

Of its own accord
the hand caresses her breast
and loses itself
in the pubic hair
and travels radiantly
over the whole body,
a hymn of touch.

Always the hand would sleep
in its own being, always
being only what it is

and it does!

Of its own accord
the hand discovers the stone
and the dust surrounding the stone
and the air.

But also the hand is a womb
out of which comes lines that some will imagine
have dictated . . . bloodshed.

The hand is what it is.

When will you understand?
When will you understand?

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IV-2 (Memorial Written in Dharwad, April 12, 1974)

 

In the temples
the priests ring the bells
of their conventional frenzy.

Beyond the city
among the noon stones
into the thousand arms of its branches the tree accepts
the flesh.

The bankers say
"The rumors of revolution must be squelched. NOW"

According
to the astrologers of Chaldea
this
is an auspicious hour.

The one nearly dead struggles to know. To know. He thinks

"The toe-rings of the women will melt into small molten pools,
the moon will rule at midday and the eagle will turn into a goat who will be torn apart by the irrepressible lion,
Arabian horses will drink from the Sea of Tiberius
and wars of liberation will break out all over the world."

This same one, in hallucination in mid afternoon moves
beneath stars planets moon
and suddenly he is walking again through golden fields, led
by a guerrilla’s vision of burning buildings and abandoned temples.
Beautiful women with henna-reddened hands who desire the rose come to him for advice
and the moon is so beautiful, wheat-pale, but no, not wheat-pale, moon-pale, for it is just what it is: the moon.
But because he is nearly dead, and is delirious, in his confusion he moans
"Eli Eli lama Sabachthani!"

and the tree trembles
with its now old burden of flesh
and the soldiers their eyes wide open
see the end of the rebellion.

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IV-3 (Ego)

 

Drunk
boots splattering the oil puddles' messages
on stones and weeds
I walk along the expressway at night
looking for the El in Queens.
Under my arm
in a brown paper package tied with a string
I carry
the dust of certain pyramids and famous men.

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