The Book of Crying Kanglings

                       XX.

— in open lading.

1ylptio: the petroglyph's golden dagger

is both the maitreya

crayon of nova and a comet's tail.

four corners there — smythe here, children.

cloverleaf:

the four tiny brass bells

make the center of the calendar,

rabbit genitals just touching the snow. then,

the crossed sticks,

a clearing poll and its red rock abyss.

yes, the golden dagger is

not the broken

winter solstice

& poe dead in the gutter, election day.

ratio 2,3 2289 november . . .

opalescent dew

reflecting the great mound

with four buttresses. azurite in the east.

an adi buddha blowing on his stick fire,

his name is Judah —

stay out of your boats on all saints' day.

the rose dagger

makes a miracle of the snow,

the dogwood marching past it . . .

first, a plague of locusts, and then

a plague of plagues,

and then a clitoris like a sun-kissed raisin.

pardon

the hullabaloo of my moon calendar, uncle.

and the boogie boogie shoe of rock art

will save us from the desert 's varnish

of that leaf prophecy

which is not 'the cross of antioch'

continuing

to the four corners, the rosewater icicle

stabbing the tropic of capricorn, meridians

laughing! dzikr, messenger,

if you hold the postcard upside down

it's a ufo, the rose-laser cannon: shit, it's even

yes, daddy, the dish

for fat lips

that the revered mr. roethke contemplated . . .

contemplation's moon,

lha-khang gi kyi, zahm-bu-ling gi kyi ray.

of course, we are past due

and must read the poems of the enemy.

you don't have to say FRAGILE for me,

at this point. it's about colors

once you've moved past them.

and an occasional shooting in the post office.

but the Ffee

is the fie is the foe.

is the poem, yes, miss, to be fed?

quinine?

the mosquito-netting

in shreds.

                                          it's the snowball's

chance in hell, isn't it.

if there is no fog,

miss dickinson is our pulpit,

alarms . . . 'the smythe' out.

                       XXI.

— one hundred syllable lading.

OM BEDZRA SATTU SAMAYA

MANO PALAYA

BEDZRA SATTU TENOPAH

TITO DREDO MEBAWAH

SUTTO COYO MEBAWAH

SUPPO COYO MEBAWAH

ANNO RAKTO MEBAWAH

SARVA SIDDHI MEPREATZAH

SARVA KARMA SUSAMEH

SI TANG SHRI REAH KURU HUNG

HA HA HA HA HO

BHAGAVAN SARVA TATTA GATTA

BEDZRA MO MY MOOTZAH

BEDZRA BAWAH MAHA SAMAYA SATTU AH

OM BEDZRA SATTU HUNG

OMBEDZRA SATTU HUNG

OM BEDZRA SATTU HUNG

PHET

                       XXII.

— phaxx and lading.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From whence does my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved.

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps you

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper. The Lord

is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not smite you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil.

He will keep your life.

The Lord will keep your going out

and your coming in.

From this time forth and forever more.

XXIII.

Dear L'urze Ekajati: I am called Osel Trodgen, and I am

one of many attendants

to His Holiness, the 21st Karmapa,

and it is my sad duty to tell you that Tulku Arak

passed last Wednesday night.

With his death

there were rainbow perpendiculars everywhere

in the charnel ground,

and thigh bone trumpets

bringing leaves out of the trees.

By his instruction,

the cremation took place yesterday. His voice came

from a golden field.

There were elaborate ringsels left in the ashes

and the ashes themselves

have already been used in a healing

by His Holiness.

When the fires were started

by a young

white-haired nun from Kham, a large

green land turtle walked out of the perkon,

and everyone heard clearly

Tulku Arak's voice singing, first

the hundred syllable mantra, and then

a Christian psalm of roughly the same duration.

The Karmapa cried, even though

it is proscribed.

His Holiness sends you his blessings

and reports that you and he

once had a chance encounter

when he was detained at the Swedish border?

There were little emerald ringsels in the ashes

of both turtles and elephants.

I've enclosed in twine

the great remover of obstacles, Gampati.

Karmapa has instructed me to carry

to you in Delhi

the living turtle also! So,

there is one crate for the turtle and one

for the heads of lettuce

with which I will buoy the spirits

of this sad but adept prisoner. Karmapa

has named him mysteriously, Georg X.

He giggled for nearly an hour afterward.

The American boy who was with the tulku when he passed

said that a cable

was being 'scrabbled' for you; that it seemed as if

the Arak was struck at the base of his skull;

that then he seemed to recover,

he went to a mattress on the floor, assuming

the full glories of the posture . . .

The scrabbled message he prepared for you

will follow in empty lading.

I am your servant.

                       XXIV.

— in empty lading.

Dear L'urze: I, too, received the communication

from 'the Smythe.' She is

a clever rascal, but I'm afraid,

bored out there traveling on her snowball.

She has new powers.

Just as the Ekajati and Septaguant

had the same mother, the Smythe

and the Septaguant had the same father.

His name was Thubten Bol, a West African man

steeped in the practice of a Shaolin ritual

that is mostly lost.

He was also a painter without talent.

Ekajati's mother told him about all this

with little consideration

immediately following the brim-light disaster

to which he was Monitor.

But, perhaps, Paul needed then

to crack up all together.

She may have saved him with this strategy.

The father simply restored

his sanity by shooting him in the foot.

There was a lot of blood and laughter,

more alcohol and mescaline. By the morning,

everyone had recovered.

I have something to say

about the Champagne Fires, and the gown

Mallus will loan you. Only accept the dress

if it is an amethyst body net.

You could walk through a wall of fire in it.

But first, you must . . .

XXV.

Dear L'urze Ekajati: I am your faithful monk,

in transit with the turtle.

I have been diagnosed somehow

with an occult dysentery.

My old schoolboy friend from the low Oxford campus,

Nagarjuna Watts, is going to finish

this journey for me. He has bright red hair

and a black mole at the third eye.

He stutters somewhat

and has the strength of six men. He is also,

fortunately, a comedian.

My best wishes. Osel Trodgen.

XXVI.

Dear L'urze Ekajati: I have long been an admirer

of your uncle

Paul Ekajati's long poem cycle, & Katydids.

Like your uncle, I too won the Yale Younger Poets' Series

prize for my first book, Stelos. My new book, Low Windows,

is to be published this late November

by W.W. Norton, and has already won

the Carl P. Thrush award for poetry. From this volume

a small poem series

dedicated to your uncle

will appear in the next number of the National Review.

I'm sure I have tested your buddhist grace by detailing

my recent good fortune in publishing, but

I wanted you to understand

that I am a serious poet

with a serious focus on the works of Paul Ekajati.

This coming November

at the Algonquin,

I will read for my publisher and a very select audience,

my poem written in homage to your uncle.

My father, Carol Talbout II, was, I believe,

an acquaintance of your aunt Laura

when she was doing volunteer literacy work

in Alaska. It would be delightful,

for my father will be in attendance, if your aunt

could accompany you to supper at the Algonquin.

I would be thrilled

to hear from you in the next week or two.

I am yours, sincerely. B.C. Talbout.

XXVII.

Dear Aunt Laura: I am still enjoying

the second postcard from Vancouver

which announces

that you will be a mother. It seems

this is an ideal place for you to be stationed.

And, no, I don't think you should regret

losing the assignment on the moon.

The last colonists to return from there

all had a cough

accompanied by brain fevers. But, yes,

of course, they were miners.

Still, the rumor is

that one of the virus-toxins from Mars

has now made its passage to Earth.

It would seem

whoever was exposed to it on our moon

sickened the quickest. But everyone

was affected.

Before Lama Arak went to Bhutan,

he reported to me

stories of more than a thousand deaths there.

It's better that you folks reach an early pension. Then

you could come here to the farm

and we'll divide the property

exactly by half. I'm serious about this.

I've begun the paperwork!

While I'm working here in Virginia, Kirsna

has remained behind in Delhi

with our new friend, Nagarjuna Watts. He brought

the boxed turtle to us.

I only hope in my absence

that Watts hasn't cooked it.

He once reached me

with a stockgramme slurrie

from the future.

I've told no one except Arak-la!

It was all a little frightening . . .

He's a giant red-haired man

with a blemish on his forehead

like some thousand-armed female avenger.

I know this will seem silly — but,

I'm not certain he's human.

He's only the fourth individual

I've met on Earth

who I've almost certainly known

to be shintling. The first

was the Ekajati himself. When I slept

the first night after meeting Nagarjuna

I had this vision of a great black khandro

rising above a marble floor,

her silver and amethyst gown struck everywhere

in its hundred sleeves

with the thickest of gold threads.

It was a vision of swords. It was the same

with her teeth!

There was a reddish champagne light

off her shoulders

and the sound of wings. She frowned

at me, but seemed pleased

that I hadn't taken sanctuary

under the bed. By the time I was awake

I was standing in the middle of the room

with one fist raised.

I have ten men working on the farm now

and the repairs will be done by Thanksgiving.

We will see you then, my love. L'urze.

XXVIII.

Dear Kirsna: this is just a brief note to send my love.

I've just come in from watching my Portuguese workmen,

who were attempting to boil lobsters in relatively small pots.

They were like girls about it. It was both grotesque

and very funny. The elder Sam and his boy

have, of course, been here for sometime with the horses.

Last week there was a grand Indian Summer,

and, using honey, they roasted field corn and fish.

It was delicious.

There are a lot of fish in the ponds now.

It would seem that old Sam

killed off the snapping turtles with dynamite

and then stocked everything fresh with trout.

Yes, I am in New York City tomorrow night,

but I will cable you by Monday. Love. Mother.

P.S.: For the second time in a month

I've received with a torn stamp, an argonne

gramme slurrie. It's addressed to you

from Nagarjuna Watts.

Here is its phaxx in simple lading:

— in spledum. — Argon Erratum 2 —

Kirsna: she disliked your dead red tigers even more than I

dislike

your working for the salvation of his High Lord Septaguant. Of

course he'd make you a Messenger to the black valleys of Bani Zarwal.

What did you think of their three-eyed mules? I'm now posted,

at my own request, in the solitary Cube

in that darkest space of the Fez Polarity.

I answered the Septaguant by saying,

"Beget the man you need!" Or,

BEGET THEM ALL. BEGET ALL YOU NEED! And now

The dhaikr's God even visits me here in forgetfulness. I elected

not to judge him, but to realize him first — I told him

it was my abiding suspicion

that he paints by numbers. then

suddenly a whole basket of fresh oranges appeared

on the walnut dais.

With the total weight of my resentment for this assignment,

I ate nearly all of them in a sitting. I've been

shitting ever since. Reading the ancient Barthes'

THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT, his one happy quotation,

The very utterance

of drifting today in France is described best

as suicide with a handkerchief . . .

Euphoria, fulfillment, friends.

The old French intellect, the torn corsages

of orange blossom and unending excrement. It

makes Proust the text of texts. These stupid atopical sensualists

ruled my countrymen for a whole century, Kirsna.

It cannot be helped. Boredom is worse. It baffles

like a fetish — deus ex machina, etcetera etcetera.

One of these great storms of iron dust is approaching.

Salutations, if I forgot them.

(.2/.7nibes.)

What a storm. The cube's magnetism righted itself

in an anomalous pancake, so now

I've been puking for hours.

Kirsna, we had to be voyagers? I dreamt

of those wild horses bathing

in white water again.

I sent an Argon telespleda to your mother's wilderness in Alaska.

It misdirected.

She's living, I believe, with Mark Jadhb

selling birch syrup and mastiffs. He was

very kind to me during the postage riots in Calcutta.

It's disagreeable to think, but

he is the most wonderful of the Shö masters I've met.

When you first moved past the moons at Gibraltar,

what did you think of those naked longshorewomen

with their colored nafs, all those white bulls

pulling the great bell across the sandy plain?

The Khandro Mother would have 'snakedeathed'

that whole sisterhood and our lost

darling Septaguant

if it hadn't been for the Buddha's second turning of the wheel,

THE SERMON OF NO MEDIUM.

When I was last there, the deer park was yellowing . . . Japanese

fast food, giant buddhas everywhere.

Charcoal-ballasting this Cube, I've regained

my equilibrium.

My sweet, Kirsna,

I've written a great bottom ode for you. Here it is, with blessings: your

Nagarjuna: this can not be sung to THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS

like Miss Dickinson's masterpieces: sorry,

Ode to the Spectral Thief, Alpha

                     The stream silent as if empty. Dusk in the mirrors. Doors shutting.

                     Only one woman without a pitcher remains in the garden —

Made of water, transparent in moonlight, a flower in her hair!

— Yannis Ritsos, trans. Paul Ekajati

The way the grapes will cast a green rail,

With tendrils and flowers, out along

A broken fence, down the edge of a field;

Then, climbing over hawthorn and up

Into the low branches of an elm. The moon

Is also up in the branches of the elm along

With a raccoon who sits and fills himself

On the dark, dusty fruit — under the branch,

On which the raccoon is situated

His deep brown feces splatter over

Queen Anne's Lace and the waving sedge

Of the pond . . .

An owl lifts out of the tufted, solitary orchard

And there are hot-silver zig-zags, lightning

Up in the fat black clouds; this quiet

Before an August storm is nothing at all

Compared to the calm after a snowfall . . .

But the long boxes of hay in the field

Will stand, they are dense coffins

In which small living things

Are caught, broken: mouse, grasshopper,

And the lame sparrow. The field looks down

To an old quarry and road, and across

To a dark beach on the Atlantic.

Stone from the quarry built a small

Custom's house out on the Point.

It's old form is in ruin, now! But bells are

Still heard out there just before dawn:

Their purpose must fade over the water . . .

The water knows the three formal elements

that should compose an ode: say it, élan!

There's turn and counter-turn . . .

And turn, again; not stand!

The epode has a talent for rattling a tambourine

Like pie-tins strung across a garden

To frighten, at night, the subtle, foraging deer.

The epode knows about fear; but, shaking

In its bones, I've said it has a talent for

Playing the tambourine by ear.

The raccoon struggling out of his tree

Doesn't care about

The eye, bait and teeth of a Windsor trap;

The pie-tins, touched by a wind moving

Over the spears of corn, do not

Confuse him.

He wanders off into the orchard and down

Into a fast stream where suddenly

A grinning hound stops him —

The coon rears up on his haunches like a bear,

Spits and screams: his claws

At the weeping eyes of the big dog: turned twice,

The hound bites into his fur, meat and then

Deep into the spilled milk of the spine. This is

when the stream seems empty, silent!

This is also where the story divides in my mind.

What can I tell you?

Only that in past centuries

There were fewer

Dimensions to any concept of time,

And there was a greater acceptance of mirrors, and rhyme.

XXX.

Laura: I know we haven't discussed . . . but I

went to the paraclete's

literary supper at the Algonquin.

Mallus had shipped me, in full lading,

a pearl and amethyst vestment

and to please, I think, Lama Arak,

I boiled it first

then allowing cold spring water

to run across it in sunlight for most of the afternoon . . .

I wore it over this white gown

that I had bought in Delhi

because it made me homesick for my mother's

orchards.

Yes, very irrational.

I was prepared to give your greeting

to Talbout' s father, but no one in his family attended,

as they were suffering the influenza.

It is here, now, in Alaska

and thousand of children have been

moved to the south. It's the work

of the Ffee, or his company . . .

Laura, theirs is the strangest community.

Standing near the cloak room, in front of me,

there was an ancient woman and her son.

 At times,

her jaw belonged to a grotesque bone shop

such as they have in Turkey or China. Well,

these two spoke to one another

in a kind of whispering and clicking

that is alternately swallowed

and then projected over some distance.

Everyone ignored them.

They were pawing at one another, and I think

they seemed exhausted in their blood.

But then her ghost jaw would glow and become

pronounced again. It was very menacing?

The Ffee was seated at the first table

with young Avery Miller and two women

from the Academy. When Talbout had completed

his reading of the poem cycle for 'uncle,'

he then came to the table. By now

we were all eating carrots with a white sauce.

There was something facile about the

poem he had written for the Ekajati.

He had thick hair at the base

of the little finger on his left hand

and he was braiding it

all while he was speaking to me. You can assume

I was not forthcoming. Anyway,

he wasn't loathsome. It was just all

very boring.

There was a smell on the refrigerated air

like sour wine. A doctor and his wife

seated at my table were suddenly taken away

for some emergency. A priest

had come to the door for them. They were both Greek.

I was just beginning to realize that

they were obviously quarreling. I would imagine

that at the moment they were being helped

onto the street, the Avery Miller stood,

tapping away at his water glass, looking

like someone who is becoming improvisational.

I heard a thousand happy years

opening above me like rain

to tin in some feckless production

of The Tempest . . .

Exactly then I saw

the Ekajati's mother entering the room

with those wasted circles around the eyes

that come with the brillo.

She was snapping her fingers

as if to smother the clicking sound

that was rising from the old woman

with the great jawbone. But this snapping of the fingers

was liturgical — it seemed

each time she did it, one of our waiters

burst into flame. Now, here's the rub, children —

no one seemed to witness the mother-in-law

or her exit from the blue room of divans.

Instead, it would seem they were watching me,

and further, I believe

I was standing in the middle of my table.

I saw Prof. Miller and the Ffee

gesturing casually to one another

while extinguishing a waiter

with two magnums of champagne. The air

went washboard with the laughter of horses

and I felt

possessed suddenly of a thousand hands,

each gone musical, each

with a firebrand . . . a weak passage from Tchaikovsky

was repeated . . .

The Ffee just smiled.

Out of the corner of my eye

I saw foxes copulating. There was a great banister

with cherubs smoking cigars,

and the more they postured, the angrier I became.

I understood that this fire was their element

and they were being purified by it.

they all became frightened.

I began to vibrate in my jeweled bodice. And then,

holding my breath — no, sucking in the wind of the room —

I made them all vanish.

It was not

like the destruction of tapestries, rather

all the dementia of human history was

passing by me in this astonishing vacuum.

I breathed out while retreating to the kitchens,

and I saw them all again, briefly,

turning to flame.

I thought how innocent time was . . .

Then there was an explosion

that made snow of a dozen or so skyscrapers,

and everything was cold.

I held onto Kirsna, and we sang.

There were other children around us with no names.

There was a black rain. The wind

made a coarse sound,

and then it too sang

om mani padme hung om mani padme hung om mani padme hung

there was more rain