Jaipur & Varanasi, India from “A Poet’s Progress,” Newtopia Magazine #21

Published in the A Poet's Progress: Newtopia Magazine

Jaipur

The Maharajah of Jaipur died the day before we arrived and everything in the whole state has shut down for two days of mourning.

After lunch, we walk downtown and come upon a funeral filling the center of town. There are floats pulled by pick-up trucks, brightly painted elephants, musicians and costumes, honking cars and tuk-tuks and bell-ringing cyclists and snarling motorcycles spilling onto the sidewalks. I’ve left my camera back in my room so I drift away from the group and find a place above the crowd where I can see the whole panorama.

Two local boys pretend to take photos of the Americans taking photos of the parade. When it becomes clear that the Americans don’t know that they are being mocked, the boys move closer, waving and yelling at the Americans in Hindi. They wave the teenage girl and her grandmother together and push the other Americans into a circle behind them. When they have everyone together, they back up and make an elaborate show of getting just the right shot, and then one of them shouts “Smile!” and they pretend to take photos. But just as the group is breaking up, the boys decide they don’t like their photographs and want to shoot another one. This time they pose the Americans facing directly into the sun and bark at them to “Smile!” When they do, the two boys lean forward, pointing their cameras directly at the young girl’s breasts and bare thighs, and run off, laughing and pushing on each other’s shoulder. None of the Americans are smiling now. The young girl asks of no one in particular, “I wonder why they wanted our photos? Hadn’t they seen Americans before?”

25 02 Veranasi, from the GangesVeranasi, from the Ganges

Banaras (Varanasi) is older than history, older than tradition,
older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.
—Mark Twain, 1897

25 03 Shiva Temple, Ghats, Katmandu, Nepal

Shiva Temple, Ghats, Katmandu, Nepal

The Pilgrim

Moving with the crowd to the ghats,
following the incandescent lights,
the Ganges darkens as the sun dissolves.

I sit on the damp steps beside those who have
crawled here and can crawl no farther,
the ones too old to stand,

and those who rest here before
trying to make their way closer
falling forward, bewildered by everything.

25 04 Khajarahu Tableau-1Khajarahu Tableau

Returned to Ash

I.

I’ve worked my way down curving granite alleys
smelling of tobacco, chrysanthemums, grilled lamb,
yellow incandescence and smoky ghats,

past kneeling pilgrims washing their foreheads
with ashes on the banks of the Ganges,
whispering mantras, grey lips trembling,

silver censors swinging over our heads,
white smoke and ragged prayer flags
snapping green-yellow-blue,

pushing my way into the center
where the night is so white that the pilgrims
cast no shadows, getting out by going in.

II. Goodnight, Irene

I rest my hand on the moving river
and see my ghostly reflection
floating, first a white forearm,

then the outline of a shoulder,
and in the darkness where a mouth
would be a voice began to speak:

“I created all of it, but life
has a will of its own
like a boat inside a river.

Everything equally is and is not.
The best of it is happenstance,
and the worst of it is happenstance too.”

I light a handful of sandalwood
and slip the last photo I have of you—
summer at the lake, your hair was short,

under the beeswax and chrysanthemums
of the flower boat I release into the Ganges
as the current lifts it from my fingers.