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In
the Beginning
IN
THE BEGINNING it was like being
Alive – any moment something fine was
To come to me, history with its infantry
Recollection of blue bending over me
From which good would issue
I longed to be versatile, married late,
Tried to welcome all the children that
Would come, begged to be chloroformed
Like
a kitten and you were the only one –
As
winters moved across a luminous empty
Viewing
gallery, in spring ephemerals
Living
underground stimulated by radiation
Sprang
up as panic grass a shade of green
That
would break young horses, I saw how
The
archeologists would arrive to find fibers
Of
my robe thrilling and head on the ground
With
the late apples, a color of the universe
at
large.
Appointed
APPOINTED
for visits with an elder tantric yogi
Two girls from California in ivory wool lob
A shuttlecock beside the Snuggery – I am
Twenty-one and on my own with a diffuse
Inner life – when the clouds lift revealing
Mount Everest – I try to love necessity
Years later, under nine million cold stars
When two people are left on the summit
Alone to die, I will take it like an animal –
But tonight, I am arrested by the diamond
On a scrupulous brown hand and a clamor of
Bells as his Holiness, protégées and chaperone
Dip
spoons in their waterglasses – 1978, Hotel
Windamere,
Darjeeling.
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