Angkor Wat

Either this was the year in my memory
or it was the other one; in any case, the
same reflecting-pool was glimmering
in the morning with the eyes of lotus
and rocks with lungs breathing, belching
the abandoned morning. She was with me
at the reflecting-pool, stone and sand
and all, wilting like the powdery weeds
under comfortable boots. Morning comes
and then afternoon, the evening and night.
One follows the other; the tiger hunts deer
and the deer never the tiger. The year I knew
was within me, not upon the calendar
and unmarked by pencil-lead, with its April
lasting the whole of September and I mis-
remembered June. Internally, all months
paint alike. The bottom of the pond was
drowsy, yelling chase chase chase away
the morning sunlight someone left their
camera exposed, capturing the melted
bricks among the palms. Green at first
then washed over completely the water
came alive all sudden compactly. In the
mirror it bathed the stone. Everywhere,
the granite bathes the sunlight: it is
morning in sanctuary. I wonder; did
garlic grow naturally in the soil as turnip
or other tubers infest earth
or if I stole it from the other world?

Invention was first, coming out of the horizon
with illuminating beams striding across
limb on limb, movement swallowing
every meter, every rhythm. The spade
a spade; the club a club and an ace a ace;
that axiomatic moment before a new
beginning, a ship undergoing repairs
in the port before setting out on galaxy,
the same music dwells. A hearse and stone
aligned in death. The constellation of existence
twinkles once, twice, and then dies
its light is revisited every four years.
Either the chameleon casts its skin off and
sheds all colour of rainbow, or you take
your clothes off and the fire in existence
dwindles for a minute before burning up
in renewal and rebirth. The holy city
was built and now unbuilt: the wind eats up
the rocks in order, and steep stairs no one can
climb up house the empty room to be alone
within. Strange is the light that the window
let in, strange was its dissonance (and the snake
heard the music without ears) when it hit
the corner and bounced inebriated through
the random rooms. In its entropy, it illuminates
the path to paradise, Shakya-muni, sage of the
Shakyas, inside the empty room. The Hunter
stalks inside the knotted weeds tracing wild pigs
and where the tiger was. A bird flies into
the mouth of the tiger. We walk through the
same stone, the arching weathered arches
held together by friction and woven slabs
defying an entire segment of universe that
exists inside, between the arch and the earth
where a sprig of rosemary grows like a child
growing in an infirmary. Walking through the
battered halls, an ancient spider navigates
the crevices weaving silk among the screens
embroidering torture and death upon the
hell screen, remnant of Akutagawa, the
painter in his mind observing the last
dredges of reality sprawling it upon a canvas
where the pain becomes reality and
there is no longer reality. The exception is
the one on the corner, without its demons
and the lone woman in the corner sitting
with herself, a screen without consequence
the world is turning on its solitude.

Green is the water of the reflecting-pool
giving us time to think. Wet soil, a tripod
unearthing the alternate ground, sediment
and jungle river flowing relentlessly (the
trip moves onward. As though no one else
is there, as though this is the only morning
and each hurries forward, foot behind foot,
across the lightless courtyard. We were on
a
river, crossing water without knowing but
the buoys kept bouncing unreliably.) forward,
pushing into tributaries further up and
tumbling down to sea. When there was a
mountain, the river ran down it. Nearness,
and away the green grass grows, all around
in bunches of flash, carrot-grass plastered
in yellow tones. Each is inevitable. In the north,
there was a port with the crannies jut up
in backwaters all slanting, slanting like
the mouth of a river (and a bird flew into
the mouth of a tiger) deceiving the real
abacus of nature. One river, born in the glacier
meanders through a lone agriculture without
pausing; the other carries straight its windowed
dams, its varicose veins swimming with the
glittering light. Pausing with you, I know
the river pauses, I know that there is a pattern
in the way the rain rushes down in silver
and an orange separates into segments. She moved
in shambles, an old train through the tracks
from Darjeeling down to the station in the south
where every wagon must be going somewhere
and a creeper sings down the wall. That was in
the winter and it is April now, all the disaster
in between crumples like smoking-paper, ashes
in the wind.