LITTLE GIRL AMY

Little girl Amy
I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
In your rags you'll crawl the streets
And bind the feet of Brahmin rats
With tales of little dead dogs.
You'll hold your father's last cigarette
To their rodent mouths
And choke them with his dying smoke.

Fluttering enthusiasm's memory wings
You use your mind to spring a trap,
Extorting vision from living maps.
Tinkering among the folds of brother Al's malodorous mind,
You seize the hem of Shankara's cloak.

He tortures your mirror with infinite time.
He fills your eyes with equal grace.
He leaves Ishwara in his place.

Little girl Amy, I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
There, in the Indies, hunger's gnawing teeth
Will eat your glossy wounds,
And words, your drowning swimmers, will be still.

And you twice born teeming with stars
Will step down from the mind's high promontory
To forge the weapons that your daughters will carry
Into distant battle.


OCTOBER 1980 & 1992