Poetry / March 2015 (Issue 27)


Two Poems

by Martin Kovan

In A Tibetan Gompa Hanging Between Worlds

two-and-a-half days
       
fasting
            
Nyung-Ne retreat

hours of chanting    prostrations

no food      water       pleasures to fall from

hours, years of life
                   
shed    smelly weathered skins

         
dredging the wood-floor
old leather women lower themselves

                             
bone-sacks to earth
eyes tender         opalescent

      
sadness of         love/ death:

Everything is born in them.

The spirit hums        hurts
         
10,000 demons flaying self

    
caught in split-motion
                     
machinery of mind

         
an unimagined physics
each thought married to value

          
burdened by judgement
            
       generating death-in-life

habitually

what cares world of tongues      bomb   fat finance

o teach us courage to plant slight nourishment

without any seed.

 

Indian Himalaya


 

Kālidāsa’s Thirst
                  to A.S.

The rain which comes down
hopelessly     pursuing itself
hunger for the woman

                                 
fierce gopi-girl
these words      fragment of torn stuff

rachitic curtain put up
against far plain knotted    space
 

                                        between us

           masque     (for dancing)
another veil         like this rain
                   
shot through with holes –

the first to come in months.

 

Andhra Pradesh


 

 
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