KARMAPA JOURNEYS SOUTH

The wild geese flying south
The gooseberry frosted on the bough
The lake frozen in the valley
The grass turning dry at its edge
The Karmapa journeying south
In search of a lute and a hat

The guards let him go
The mother averted her eye
The brother did not know
The sister of 24 wished to go
With her brother in search of a lute and a hat

The wheels crushed the snow
The horses were willing to rear up
But the riders let them go free
The Karmapa had ridden a bestiary
Of wolves and goats in valleys
His stone a high throne
His toy a lamaserie made of small stones
His face shone and shone
In twenty days he came home

The High Lama broke his reverie
Twice to see this bright boy
The klieg lights blew up in his face
His face shone and his eye was clear
He ate light, slept well
And went in search of a hat and a lute

Then as if in a dream
There was no throne
There was no lamaserie
There was no lute or hat
There was none of all that

The water unfroze in the lake
The grass returned, green
Where there was a valley
There's now only a stone
And a tear unlocked in the boy's eye

He saw what the Buddha had seen
He spoke once only Tibetan
But now he does not need to use even that
All the world watches stunned
The Lama is silent
Like an unstrung lute
an empty hat
 

BATHERS AT RIVER BHAGSU NAG, DHARMSALA

Wend your way
up a snaking path
To come to Bhagsu Nag:
Bhagsu came here
In search of water
And put an entire river
in his pot
The Snake-King, Nag
Uncoiled these labours
For the river was his habitat
Largeness of heart
Saved the day
Bhagsu became king
of hill and plain
Where the river wends its way...

Today the boys
are at their Sunday bath
I watch them strip to the waist
And plunge heedless, headfirst
into the pond, newly born
Their wet limbs ripple
in the morning sun
As their loincloths fall
in coils to the floor
Beads of water fall like rainbows on stone
And the snake in paradise
is aroused once more: Jai Shankar!
Jai Jai Bhole Nath!
Generosity with the young alone
Saves the old
The sun sleeps in shadows
on the bank of fallen leaves
The King, Bhagsu was young
The Snake, old
Such is the hold of old tales
Upon our young
Father and son coupled in story
and history
And water washes away everything
to a steep fall into a valley
There to snake to what sea
Which is but a vast store of actions
and re-actions...
You can trace your way
from the valley
up the river
to a green spring:
From that clean source
Sprang our actions and our poems
Which are told like the telling of beads
And our lift was muddied
by our very hands...
But if all is maya
Then what is this body
of my lovers
rippling in the sun
Writing their reality
on the water
and the waves
Beckoning me, an old poet,
to come...