Book of the Jaspers

                    XXIII.

— Uma 'ta, Bhutan.

Fool: Forgot to instruct that this

will appear on Ekajati's forehead

by morning:

You saw before, on Mead Mountain Road?

Right-oh? Yea? Good! A fool's Fool.

P.S.: did you like your Teacher as the

Canadian beer-wagon, Nedperse? Did I

call you landlord? One is bored, being perfect.

                   XXIV.

— in white xylograph.

Dear Aunt Laura: it is a relief to hear that you are well.

How frightening that your stomach ruptured

while out on the lake. The appendix is such a curiosity.

Something similar happened to me

in the mountains of New Hampshire when I was twelve. I secretly

believed it was willful — a desperate attempt

to escape the local jeweler

who was coaching summer baseball for my father.

I wanted to be with my grandparents in northern Vermont. Well,

after great suffering, I did get to convalesce

with my great aunt at the homestead in Waterbury Center.

You've guessed

from this casual salute, that Urze-la

is returned to us. She will write to you soon, but

is, for the moment, still somewhat confused.

It just took my heart away, as she danced before Clara,

the sudden internal movements, the concealed

mudras began to open

and I recognized the grotesque Chöd phrasing

of the charnel ground. That craning seraph

of the Black Mother's raised right leg.

Well, she quickly passed

from blessing and exorcism to absolute spiritual

ravishment. She simply vanished.

If Lama Arak was not so precious to me,

I would have grown angry with him. When I first queried,

he responded like a bold beggar, demanding

one of our horses. He asked for a ringlet of her hair,

calling her 'the Delog.'

Nothing happens, he assured us.

You must remember, Laura, that the Delog traditionally

dies and passes three days and three nights

visiting paradises and hell realms. It must be

a much higher accomplishment

to do this in the physical body. Well, our Urze

did just that!

Clara and I, in preparation for her return,

draped Mediterranean blue skirts of poor cotton

over the door and windows of the room

in which she had performed the phurba dance. We were careful

to see that it remained clean,

free of the presence of food and drink.

I sealed the door in a golden paraffin

of the wrathful scorpion of Mt. Arig.

After three days and three nights

we became discouraged. We opened the room

and sat there for most of the morning?

Truly, nothing did happen. Then Clara,

who is a rock, began to sob and shake! It was dark out,

with fog and rain, but I dressed us in red slickers

and we went out onto the farm. Near

what appeared to us as Urze-la's pin oak

was this great painted mare, and we

realized immediately

that she was giving birth to a foal. As we approached,

through the glistening

azure and red cellophane of it all, I saw

in full amazement, that it was Urze-la.

Clara fell to the ground.

I began fumbling about in tears —

the clear sack had burst

and there, plastered with mucous and blood,

looking at us with eyes

neither of us can describe, was your niece —

steam rising from her hair in all the colors of a rainbow.

At that moment,

every damn horse on that farm,

save the painted mare, began screaming in approval . . .

It seemed a weird celebration.

It always amazes me that he knows what he knows.

If he wasn't such a fool about it, they'd have stoned

him by now.

I think L'urze actually smiled at me. I carried her

to the house.

Clara bathed her and slept with her that night.

She ate fresh bread and soup the following noon

and then spoke, saying, that everything

in our lives seems awkward, cardboard or encrusted

with light. Then she cried. I believe

I was amused.

By evening she made a fire in the parlor

and seemed herself. But, Laura —

Urze-la's eyes will never be the same.

They are amazingly kind and, yet,

intently nervous. It is the look of the horse.

And it isn't.

This is the Khandro's business, absolutely.

We've just filled a vase

with pussy willows from the riverbank, you know

down near the boat house.

Meditating with our niece is difficult

to describe. It reminds me

of a night near Portsmouth. I was sitting on the beach

while a great moon set. There was a breeze

and my eyes were closed. The whole time

I felt the largeness of it, thinking it was all moon,

when in actuality

an enormous tanker had silently passed between us —

that is, between me and the moon.

It took perhaps five minutes. Sitting with her

is like that now, except it is glorious.

You can expect a cable from her tomorrow. Love. Ekajati.

XXV.

Dear Aunt: god, I hope you've recovered from your surgery.

I hope you didn't worry about me. After all that has happened

I think I should be frightened, but I'm not . . .

Uncle has told you much of it. But

what I haven't explained to anyone yet

is that I visited the paradise of the primordial Buddhas

for what I believe would be one of our days.

And then I spent the balance of the time

wandering through simply unforgettable, terrible hell realms.

Aunt, at one point, I was sitting on a large rock

observing a very slow and partial

lunar eclipse — everything was reddening

and suddenly I realized the man beside me,

whose hand I held,

was Joseph Stalin. Behind him were several mongrel dogs

who were the progeny of a lifetime he had suffered,

circa 720 B.C.

His zone was a clean vajra hell.

He said that he was unlucky; just

a child wandering across a hilly land

which was white with garbage, and

crawling inside an abandoned icebox,

he solemnly closed its yellow cork door.

The great monster of a millenium — and

all he could say

was that he was afraid. That he had always

been afraid. That finally, he had made it over in anger,

and so he became one of the ghosts of noon.

I felt contempt for him, then I felt nothing.

I saw the Ffee standing in a yellow river, which I believed

to be urine. A dozen blue heron

threatened him from above.

I asked the heron not to harass him any further

and they laughed at me with the laughter

of Uncle Ekajati . . .

You know, I think, unbelievably

that he, without any question, killed the Ffee

and then performed the Chöd tea

right there on the dry riverbank.

Don't ask me how I know this? Poor aunt, I'm growing tired.

I hope I will speak to you within the week. Love. Urze-la.

P.S.:

This link to the horse-head, our great lord Hayagriva,

has more to do with uncle, mother, and you.

My connection is to the Khandro,

and if I knew how those two forces met

somewhere in our future,

then I would have remembered

everything from my great dance, or sleep?

XXVI.

Dear Urze: your bowed aunt has just returned

from a stroll along the inexhaustible

hospital corridors. I'm feeling a little transparent

and have, in fact, lost some weight.

I never quite had your mother's waist,

so this is good. And of course, she always envied me

my strength, so you should believe that I will heal

very quickly.

If I hadn't known

your mother so well, I would be surprised

at everything you and your uncle have reported

about the events of these last few weeks. It frankly does

scare the hell out of me.

I have a useful vision for you

from my rather odd introduction to anesthesia,

but first

I should say that Peter sends his love

and your uncle will be happy to hear that he's

Lieutenant Schofelt once more. Perhaps

we have Paul to thank? Though I doubt it.

Now, my dear, I was put under by the old sailor's

method of a little smoke

and repeated flashes of delcloidal light

to the eyes.

I remember nothing from that whole day,

and nothing of the vacuum. Except

for this dream: I had the sense

that you and your mother were observing me

somehow from above, while in a great fog

I rowed a boat out to an island

in the middle of a poison lake. I was carrying with me

a sack of barley. There in the moving fog

were great raised snakes, purple and yellow,

and they were assisting me. There was as well,

and this makes little sense,

sleigh bells coming from the direction

where I imagined you had perched. Sled bells

and the cries of prisoners who were in some vast

wooded place like Siberia?

There was an eclipse expected. (I was forced to ignore

all of this as atmosphere.) I rowed to the island with my sack of grain

and heard what I can only describe

as the laughter of cats and pigs. There was something

pained about it. They had a great hunger.

I opened the sack to feed them,

and out of it poured

my appendix attached to intestine

which I severed.

I was instantaneously healed

by the very sound of those innocent bells . . .

Suddenly I felt nauseous. I woke

to an Irish nurse slapping me about gently,

calling my name loudly, with her offering

of a scanning thermometer and ice water. Now, my sweet,

it is my turn to be tired. I'll speak to you tomorrow. Aunt Laura.

XXVII.

Dear Uncle Ekajati: the aunt has returned to our farm.

She asked, before everything,

to walk up to the north pasture to visit 'the paint' —

she had two waxen yellow apples that were quite sweet —

and there was a light rain. I think

she has completely recovered from her surgery.

And you are settling affairs

in New Philadelphia — I thought

you would never go there again.

Did the I-Ching reverse its warning

about the two women cooking

under the red shell of a tortoise? Or,

& le ciel obscure . . .

The new gardener, this Uri Vanekin,

has done you proud — out in the flowers

he has arranged hillocks of jasper,

obsidian and translucent flints. 'The paint'

had for a stud-companion

a local appaloosa called Jaspers. It died

of an encephalitis, this last December.

In the paper today there's a photo

of the airport at Nîmes

closed amazingly with drifting snow

that reaches nearly the noses

of the stranded airliners.

The pilots refuse

even to use the maple-leaf shearing lifts

against this weather. I heard your trip to New Philadelphia

was stormy. We are late in this eleven year cycle

of magnetic phlegm from the sun.

You should walk out

to where

I heard the laughter of kanglings. Also,

in the paper, all these children

coughing blood in the east of the Sudan.

Those butchers will go blind —

we can't even imagine, uncle. Red clouds and black

crossing the long burning train

until it spills off the bullet track

into a flooded granite abyss. Just cabbages

floating on the surface while the sun sets.

These men are not your brothers. You never sat with them.

But one can become angry

with your sex, uncle: '

Then I shudder and say, Khandro,

khandro of the staggering snow plateaus, remember the poem,

the cradle song he wrote in Amsterdam:

it described peasants dressed warmly

in sack, spreading out

past the margins of white space,

past the blue canal, to an horizon

indentured to its foreground

where before dawn the children

have gathered wet armloads of calamus and roses

to be boiled for the perfumes

of a now artless Nouveau Provence. Broomsticks

stirring sweet grass from Mexico, all the petals

of tiger-lily and nasturtium.

Baskets of dried rue, green claw, and the

Master's hornpout preserved on a block of ice.

Can I cry to you, 'the Ekajati,' across these cold

lyric grasses of North Europe? It is your punishment

to dream again of your childhood

with its cloud-wheels, in Flanders: still, there are

magpies plucking out the eyes

of a condemned Protestant farmer

in his blue jacket and orange trousers.

The child is weeping at the foot of the great pole.

You cannot forget her, or this painter, the elder

landlord, Brueghel. He had two sons —

I swear on their scriptures — one

was christened 'Hell,'

and the other 'Velvet.' On this planet

let us put down the candle, the book

of confessions, and a purple scarf

that mother made

during incessant gray rains last Oktober . . . soha.

This time, I will forgive you.

L'urze, Khandro of Sumtsek.

                     XXVIII.

(.1/.9 jibes.)

Dear Urze Ekajati: we regret the death

of your uncle, Paul, by heart attack

on November 3, 2279. He passed

in the city of New Philadelphia. The sun was not rising.

This is my stockgram.

You do not know me. I am Alfred Talbout's mother

from Old Canada. I was visiting your uncle. I was not

one of his women!

Again, with regrets. Jane Talbout.

                     XXIX.

— in empty lading.

To L'urze, the Khandro of Sumstek, at Achi:

I was a poor advisor at best. I am now

returning to the assemblies. Here is a poet,

who was your father, who did also drown himself,

but in the River Seine.

~

A stub of red pencil in your hand.

A landscape rising beyond the carcass

Of black larkspur,

Beyond the Milky Way where

The lights of galaxies are strung out over a dipper of gin

With a large sun and the rotund

Fuchsia moon. Her closet is empty, except for the manuscript

With your signature. She has left you!

Where was it in the field

That you threw the telephone:

After moving away

From the farmhouse, you found it again when

Returning for the lost cat—

From the ditch, but Dexedrine presses a pencil

Up against your eyebrow and temple. And

You've forgotten—what was it?

Out there in the field calling

And all of a sudden, under severe stars, beside water,

You remembered everyone who was a friend.

But why your hand is locked on a red pencil, again,

At the bottom of a wintry meadow, in New Jersey,

Is the mystery rising behind you on a wind.