The Book of Crying Kanglings

                       XIV.

— in the long second night, Mönlam.

Mother Khandro: bullying the Guru is not the best idea!

This extends

to his Canadians. So you would refuse

the glorious dharma to those very beings

who have been most prepared

for it by their karma? Curious. Perverse!

Your humble master witnesses here the old imperialism

of your Northeast Kingdom

and all the glamours of its inversions

like Thoreau, Melville, or Emerson.

They were all children. Where

are the jewel ornaments of their liberation?

my child, I regret

that The Bardo Thodal is being read

for the young Kirsna. I am very sorry

but precedents suggest

that even in your sobering culture

in the West, we are all the dead.

ignorance is the best example.

I didn't know, not yet I didn't,

that the snow witch was the elder sister

of Wickle Ffee. I hope

you buried her hands in the sea.

That would occupy her for a week

or two. Children.

We are all children! This stockgram

is weakening. My knees too.

I am so sorry for your loss, but

when the red kitten comes

it will be your mother. And Ekajati

is the young boy who brings it to you. Witness

in this loss, great gain? My blessings. Your teacher.

Post Script:

The Vajrasattva Prayer — you may begin

doing one million of them,

to be completed by early June:

when the second mayfly hatch

is everywhere in Bhutan . . .

L'urze, I was fishing here in a stand of oak

when suddenly a black rainbow

similar to the leggings of a Kadampa Tara

flew past, a butterfly

of grossly etched proportions.

It stuck out its tongue

at your revered teacher, and groaned.

Do you find that vodka

carries a happy insult to the brain?

It is intoxicating. My love. the Otrul, fool.

                       XV.

— in full 'mibes.

Dear Mother Khandro: this moon, I'm yet to speak

to you outside of these cables,

but I've seen you walking with a lame boy

which gladdens me to no end.

This Italian tablecloth that you spoke of, well,

look at the shamanic aprons

worn across the great plateau and remember

how much is forgotten.

This lame boy I see you with — one day

when you are bathing his chest

feel along the very bottom of the sternum,

and you will find in the bone there

a very distinct promenade and pyramid,

all in the ratio. You've taken your losses

very well, and there are absolutely none

forthcoming. The worst of that is behind us!

There are not any details

regarding the three children. With the Ffee,

it is like this. But his hold on us is quite illusory.

The blackguard

is with us again,

but in the assumptions of a fully adult body.

He will publish poems in The New Yorker,

sell millions of tons of grain to Egypt.

He will ice skate in Poland.

He'll hunger and thirst in the Australian desert

for thirty days. We will know him,

that's for certain. For the last

two hundred and ninety-nine years,

the aboriginals have been deserting

their storied land

for passage in the night sky.

They were escaping in the face of the Ffee.

Isn't that extraordinary.

They call him Beckett Carol Talbout.

Before the assumption, he was educated at Yale

and published a slim volume of poems

under the name B.C. Talbout.

He did some engineering work with his father,

in Alaska. The assumption

occurred on his twenty-first birthday.

It was a boating accident — his heart

must have stopped for two whole minutes.

He had swallowed water and gasoline.

His first conscious gesture

was to laugh fire all over his sister.

Neither of them was harmed. He is

thirty-three now, and we are in trouble! Without fail,

you are to wear your sonors at night.

We'll meet next week, at your apartments.

We should have a small service of refuge

for your new friend. I believe

you call him Arlie. Here in Bhutan

it is beyond belief but my Canadians

are abandoning these mountains

for their Rockies.

And, yes, Mother Khandro

they have taken with them their money. Ha.

All the passes here are open but one.

It is that ominous season

where you could just die of acne.

Blessings on you, L'urze. The Otrul.

XVI.

Dear Mother Khandro: you buried her hands

in a great bed of standing kelp — pepper-dulse

and larkspur.

You left the tongue

of the forward shoe in her burned mouth.

You buried the child's bell in her.

Ha' ree. Kri' ea! When I arrived here on Mars

I discovered one of your uncle's tents abandoned

with the most marvelous provisions inside. Even raisins,

lard and vermouth. He has found

only one of the three Dza Obums.

His work on the inscriptions is brilliant.

Actually, I have heard a good deal

about his kindness to people here, mostly

from the miners.

Now, it is my sad belief

that I am about to render

what is perhaps your first description

of the incident on Jupiter. It is at best,

unfinished and impressionistic.

It began, as you know, that Friday

with wild paraffin storms. Septaguant's two cruisers

were attacked by large

white plated triangles. He mistook them for a kind of hail.

There was a blue sheeting

that seemed the mother of the triangles,

it would fold against space

and then another birthing of the ice.

There were lightning bolts whose thunder

proved a torment to the ears . . . some went

mad with it. Spitting blood, etcetera.

It's good you have me, a Viking nun

for a friend in this conflict — there have been no surprises

for us since we conquered those French monks.

The war-horses of Job, etcetera . . .

The great Number One geyser on Io

during the battle of the triangles

was transforming into a black sable plume

like those that adorn funeral wagons

and their horses.

Now, just prior to the darkening of the geyser,

and exactly opposite to it,

in an inclined field of boulders,

there was a hard meteor shower

of a very odd composition:

heavy table zinc and oxides of biolates

with a phosphorescent scruff

that burned off over twenty days . . .

The inexplicable turbulence in the airspace

over Washington state occurred

on this curious seventh day

with the blackening of the spume.

Our children's plane that morning,

at precisely nine o'clock,

crashed across the eastern bench of Gladstone Mountain,

one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Morgan.

My granddaughter, Kaya, alone with a nurse-physician

and her husband,

were unharmed. Your Kirsna vanished utterly,

along with a female Marine

and a local evangelist named Theodore Williams.

Reverend Ted Williams's accordion was also vanished?

They were all going to the Nasa Academy

near Nome, Alaska. This mission

was defined by a Lieutenant Colonel Hickock,

famed for his research in 'so -called' psychic phenomena.

He proved so unpardonable in my eyes

that I slew him

with a clot just off center in his brain. Pop!

Two quatrains and a smudge pot. It took

all of five minutes.

'If you can't respect children

you should stay clear of me . . .' I did warn him!

When you killed the Ffee's sister, naturally,

my house fell. Your mourning

cleansed the length of our fjord, from the rocks

up to the high red heathers.

I will always consider myself in your debt,

my dear L'urze Ekajati. I would like to visit you,

in perhaps six months, in Delhi?

I know in your lineage

you willingly

suffer the consequences of all your magic.

I will offer perfumes in the Bardo

in acknowledgment of your sacrifices. I will burn

man-tall candles here in the desert

with frankincense, as an additional service

to your Kirsna. Does your assembly

scree with frankincense?

I know for you Buddhists there is only compassion

under skillful means.

But there will come a night, child,

when I will loan you my gown

and you'll go for scallops to the Algonquin.

We'll burn the town down. The last hypth' of Mallus.

XVII.

Dear Lama Arak: so, for you, here is a sealed

diplomatic cable from Sikkim.

I had this afternoon a fifteen minute audience

with his Holiness, the Karmapa,

who is such a beautiful child

I can simply not describe him for you.

The 'location verse' left by his predecessor

named both parents, specifying his birth in,

of all places, the anguished

black-powder district

of Kathmandu. It was a rainy evening

and the birth of the baby

cleared the skies. There was the sound of conchs

and laughing horses. Flowers

kept falling from the sky

until everyone was blind to the filth

of the city. This is what I learned

while riding in our taxi!

I do hope that soon

you and your friends will be reconciled

to these wonderful Karma Kagyu sadhus. It is time.

The child Karmapa had told his mother

of how he dreamt all last night of a great fire

with flies made of black gold rising in it. Guru,

I believe this details

the second of the champagne fires in Manhattan.

In my sleep, I learned

they would come on Election Night, 2289.

You were wrong, the lame boy who accompanies me

is not the Ekajati. And under this sealed cable

I am comfortable saying

that my little friend

is our Kirsna, and he is not

returning to the Academy.

Master, I do believe your Bardo prayers

returned him to us. But he protests

that he is not just old mother Kirsna,

but the dark father Ekajati as well.

Is it possible

that my mother and father are contained

in this one beggar child? He has

a tantric tattoo on his shoulder blade

of a red and black checkered cat. Spirals for eyes.

Yes, I thought that would get your attention.

When he awoke for the first time

here in my apartments,

he reported on a vision

which convinces me that the Ekajati,

while he throttled the Ffee, was actually

drowning him in the future waters of a river

that will rise in a great flood

throughout Montana. On this same night,

Manhattan will be burning.

Rinpoche, does it take simultaneous

deaths by fire and water

to despatch a Ffee;

in the way that two of the four provinces of Ireland

are assigned to a single son of Israel?

In the burning of Manhattan

will they be Issachar and Judah?

The diseases of angels are of time . . .

If Milton were to appear here,

in all his errors, the lustrous ebony Ark

cradled in his arms, would you spit

the individual jewels of the high-priest's breastplate

into his face . . . khandro weirdings, &

beware priest,

this is the blind man with a snake. Uncle

has a recording angel for an attendant, doesn't he?

Once I dreamt of Ffee, yellow hair

nursing at my breasts. My milk was black

and he seemed eased, and slept.

I said to him, "There now child, hush,

for when you wake . . . ."

And I raised a great spade and split his head.

Once, this one served the Potiphar in Egypt.

I can hear cranes flying overhead.

I wish like Longchempa

I could walk with my brown sack

up into the snowy mountains.

Lama, my love to you. L'urze of Sumstek.

XVIII.

Dear Mother Khandro: lovely — all the news

you've sent to me. Kirsna is with you, but lame

from a plane crash. The Ekajati has fused

himself with the boy's heart — much as Ffee

was released into the lungs

of the young Carol Talbout . . .

When I think of the Ffee's anatomy

I always remark on the larger canines

and the thinning enamel; it isn't chimpanzee

to K. afarensis. The new hominid polka

looking just like a stringy chicken.

And, now, out of the throat of Cygnus

they visit us like jackals and are legion.

Remember the chimney swifts that cold day

in London.

These children of ours — Kaya

and your Kirsna, before they ever left the Seminary,

tattooing one another with tantric firecats. That's a

good laugh. Your meal of scallops in Manhattan, in

November — yes, it will be Election day in the boroughs.

There's a painted eclipse hung on that moon!

It will be very different.

I am to visit you soon.

I brought a turtle for the boy. I, myself,

must first stop at Rumtek

and witness this young Karmapa. Very wonderful

news, very wonderful. Tulku Arak.

P.S.:

Yesterday, Sonam Detch went tobogganing by himself

up in the high pass,

and while descending the spruce field that spills

into the valley,

moving at 50 m.p.h., he saw suddenly

a small family of Yetis

bowing to him with great piety. He wasn't certain,

but laughing or crying,

at the next turn he hit the great oak

and dislocated his shoulder.

We have made him mushroom soup.

He feels very confused by this experience. I think

it is a good joke on my young German translator.

And, now, even he has disciples.

XIX.

Dear L'urze: no, the turtle is not decorated.

Your Hindu friend, the librarian, can do you that

absurd service. This is a grand land turtle

and she will outlive all of us

save, of course, you great mother.

Old Gyurmey Tsultrim has gone to Jamaica

for two weeks with Lama Yeshe

where they will do a Po'vah empowerment

and teach from Lord Tsongkhopa

for one whole weekend.

Just this past Monday, a fire quickly

raced through the kitchen

and boys ran to Lama Yeshe

thinking the whole monastery to be lost.

The Great Pearl just climbed to the rooftop

and scattered cedar shavings in four directions.

Just like with Lord Tsongkhopa

the fire was halted

and there was really no discernible damage.

I think Jamaica is a good place

for the Pearl this week. Now

I get to be the star around here

and teach the girls from Calcutta

the red eight-armed Chenrezig. Just kidding,

my dear L'urze. Lama Yeshe humbles us all

one way or another. This confession

is not fun anymore. Your friend. Tulku Arak.