Play chess with bottle caps.

“for sale” sign standing in the field:

dearest, dearest,

Soot on the sill.

a garden full of weeds

THE SIX HELLS OF THE ENGINE ROOM

The Hot Air Hell of the fiddley where rails

are too hot to touch and your shoes burn

The oily cramp Hell of the bilges

painting underside pipes—saltwater and oil

ankledeep slosh in the shoe.

Inside-the-boiler Hell, you go in through a

hot brick hole where it’s black

and radiates heat

Back of the boilers-Hell soogying valve-wheels

and flanges

Shaft Alley Hell getting rubbed by the rough

spinning shaft

Paint Locker Hell, it smells fumes,

your hands get all sticky.

MAYA

for Peter Orlovsky

white clothes—white skin—

white cows—

the dream of India—

and flowers—

teeth stained red,

hair silver

like that old Jain jeweller

wouldn’t touch meat

a little O now and then

MOTHER OF THE BUDDHAS, QUEEN OF HEAVEN, MOTHER OF THE SUN; MARICI, GODDESS OF THE DAWN

for Bhikku Ghosananda

old sow in the mud

bristles caked black

down her powerful neck

tiny hooves churn

squat body slithering

deep in food dirt

her warm filth,

deep-plowing snout,

dragging teats

those who keep her

or eat her are cast out

she turns her small eye

from earth to

look up at me.

Nalanda, Bihar

WANDERING THE OLD, DIRTY COUNTRIES

—in your clean overalls

who’s poor?

Evtushenko or the

shop foreman won’t say.

I’m not speaking for America,

But for poets—

well yes malnutrition

Bad teeth, shit-stained babies

Flies around the eyes,

And nobody pities them

but the humanist bourgeoisie

and the Komsomol kids.

over the jolting buses

Bustards       loosefeathered

Vultures hunched on hills

That fat baby flesh, khol eyes

feed them well.

Them soviets, them

U.S. men

Helping.

ON OUR WAY TO KHAJURAHO

On our way to

Khajuraho

the bus stoppt, we ate

guavas

cheap.

a toilet

with a picture of a woman and a man,

two doors,

in the square

dusty village somewhere on the way.

a girl thirteen

gave pice in change

to an old woman bought some sweets;

the men of Bundelkhand

wear elf-tongued

flowery leather shoes.

she must have been low caste.

the girl stood off

little coins

crosst from hand to hand

ANURADHAPURA CITY OF THE PLEIADES

for Joanne

Anuradhapura city of the Pleiades

is

cool and grassy

underfoot.

white monkeys, white

granite

posts lie tumbled crisscross

white

dome stupa with the spire tower gold

network oak like

her black dress on

kneeling thighs

making a rubbing

on the foot floor

moon shape stone;

lion, elephant, geese;

ring below the stairs.

of all the buildings nothing but a plinth.

us married;

meadows of new grass.

CIRCUMAMBULATING ARUNACHALA

for centuries sadhus live and die

in dolmen rock-slab huts near

Arunachala

Small girls with gaudy flowers

flash down the bare walk road,

the weight, the power,

the full warm brilliance of the human mind

behind their eyes:

they die or sicken in a year.

Below the hill—