CAUSA SUI
Chennai, February 12, 2010

His blood--another quack elixir?
His body, if you're ill at ease
at your own altar,

might as well drink antifreeze,
might as well eat paper.
Clever, crude, belligerent,

but evil? Great news for
those whose mirrors hurt,
you're innocent as chard.

(Break them! Cut the throats
of demons with their shards!)
Let God in you be God.

MY HAT
(for Anisha, two years old)

My name is Zudumanguru,
I live in Freudenstadt;
Somadhi Uru Vangulu
Is what I call my hat,

My hat, my hat,
Somadhi Uru Vangulu
Is what I call my hat.

Why don’t you call it Sister George,
Sennacherib or Matt?
Too many things composed of straw
Have silly names like that;

My hat, my hat,
Somadhi Uru Vangulu
Is what I call my hat.

Would Father take his peepers off
Before King Jesophat?
I always do. Before the queen
I take off more than that,

My hat, my hat,
Somadhi Uru Vangulu
Is what I call my hat.

SRI VIJAY SIVA, VOCAL
February 8, 2010

How I must look to the wiry Tamilians
milling about on the sides of roads or
predictable on scooters as a single electron's
choice of a pinhole; crowds for the most part


all under 30 years old: women in salwar kameez
or saris, almost none (except my wife) in pants;
men in pants lungis mundus with short-sleeved shirts
never tucked inside their trousers and


everyone thin as a lizard's tail--How do I look,
an old white man in kurta and pyjamas
trying his best to cross a road in Besant Nagar
and get back home--Who knows?


Unlike tortoises and Keralites, Tamilians don't stare.
Trying to survive after a concert of
carnatic music at the local Siva temple, during which
I sat on the floor for three hours


still as the neon-lit statue of Ganesh, while
(what would make a rapid Rossini passage sound
declamatory Wagner,) notes notes notes rose all controlled
by the om of the drone. The tablist good,


the violinist better. But best of all, the voice--
What can I say? Mozart first, carnatic music
second? I don't say. I listen. I sing, I swing,
dodge a bus and return to the world.

FIVE POEMS FROM INDIA
(February 2-5, 2010)


1. MOSS

Heart has decided to live years beyond Roethke's
by not being fed by narrowed arteries. Mouth
has chosen to have its beers in earthly bars
for now and not at White House Tavern in the Sky.

Then the ghost of Eberhart comes by and asks: why?
"I survived everybody. And nearly all critics agree
that I outlived everything I wrote except The Groundhog.
Saint Teresa in her wild lament, indeed; indeed."

I don't have the answer. No longer ask that question--
Why should the humbled let perfection-thirst
give them a stroke at 50 like Glenn Gould?
Unlike Mozart, who wrote a sonata at 9

which I still find difficult, yet died at 35,
my skill lies in beating common time. Having had little,
(except the love of her,) reading, listening to Bach's
Ich habe genug, I shall die, almost completely alone.



2. FROM THE GURU NARAYANA SWAMI TEMPLE, THALASSERY, KERALA

I have as much pity for your self
as I do for a newly plucked orange.
My image is the whirlwind in each seed

pushing all out in balanced perfection
so it may blossom--unlike you, whose
wars are so unlocal--Does this make you bad?

Even you who rage and plot and wish
who put a hook into earth's worms and fish
are innocent as fruit you have for lunch,

this is my secret; you do not have one.
So reach the bough before it freezes;
enjoy gold oranges, before it snows.


3. THE OLD MAN AS THE SEA

My prison hadn't any doors
and was 13 billion light-years long--
True space is never absolutely cold:

The iceview of the self is colder--
I-voids dissipated brightness, while
the core of Private Galaxy sought annihilation.

Was it age or grace? The glaciers melt.
Ich habe genug--My cup is not half full;
Now that I don't need much, it overflows.


4. AFTER GREAT PAIN

Now that you lie down, repeat:

Reduce me to a thought that sends her love;
reduce me to a deed that helps her live;
seduce me, Earth--Hers is now my will.

Rise--You've been resurrected!


5. (DIS)SATISFIED


I am a leaf. Oh, fuck!
I'd rather be Jesus or an antlion.
Everything is one? That means
I also am a bucket
half filled with water
waiting for mosquito larvae
between two rusted trucks.

Old Saint Lawrence as a frog
dissected alive in a lab
is too busy croaking to hear prayers.
That means I'll be forever
everything: nits in summer,
a madman teaching cardamum to sing,
pure-bred lapdogs, poets, and a snail.

I'd rather be one piece of colored glass.
A Down child swoops and picks me up;
looking through my body, claps and sees
Rosy Brother, Sister Red, and laughs.
I'd rather be one millipede and am
a fungus-ridden leaf, fools-tongue--
When will God shut the fuck up

The day after tomorrow?
If I'm lucky, decades after that.
I'm really happy as an orange leaf
falling very slowly in October.
Just above me is a nervous squirrel;
just below me are a robin's nest
and two Montgomery lizards--Finis!