“At last his father turned on him in anger. ‘Enough!’ he said. ‘Why should I give you to God? I’d rather hand you over to Death!’ As a dutiful son, Nachiketas took him at his word, and set out at once for the House of Death.” – The Katha Upanishad, translated by Thomas ByromI.
I fought towards Death, arms stiff, my ramrod spine
slammed at the river’s roaring, boiling blood,
my legs’ flesh cooking, yet I did not fall,
stalked through the reeking cries in that black air,
pulled up the smoldering bank, dragged past sharp rocks
before Death’s house, its red enormous door,
and pounded, shouting: Can you not know me?
Behind the curdled glass white twisting forms
clawed at each other, shrieked confusion, cried:
Death is not here, he walks out on the earth.
Three days I stood before that door, and held
my rage in tensioned muscle, fear tied down
to rigid tendons, stared at souls that writhed
in mid-air, cracks across the sky that blew
black storms of hail and fire into my face;
dark lesions purpled down my arms, my throat
was filled with sand, sparks burned unguarded skin;
my left eye burned to ash, my bowels imploded,
tore each other in the bloated sack
of melting bile my body had become:
such waiting, breathing, holding, screaming, pain –
I seized black, ragged vultures’ grimy wings
and flung them into stones, watched steaming brains
drip through rough granite cracks onto the ground.
The third day’s end: a figure strode across
the river, feet unburned, robes red, hair black,
his eyes a deeper black, face livid white.
I wrenched my gaunt charred legs and turned, I dragged
my shattered face to face him, sucked in all
the air like fire, screamed: Know me, O Death!II.
His smooth white arms grasp mine, he holds me up
and carries me into that great red house,
carved muscled skin beneath my head, my neck
relaxes from the soft heat of his touch.
Great curving stairs, white halls hung with pale silks –
he gently brings me to a broad, deep bed;
the room’s dim light hides colors, but I squint
my eyes to catch faint, half-imagined things:
a chair I know, a quilt I recognize,
and if those curtains opened, I would see
the trees that grow outside my mother’s house.
He puts me down, a precious bundle with
the rope that holds it fraying into threads,
unraveling into pure strands of light;
he asks forgiveness, wipes my forehead, then
he says, unwary: Ask, and it is yours.
I see my chance and pounce, but carefully:
What is the secret of our deaths, O Death?
His eyes grow dark and he retreats, he begs:
No, ask me something else, that is too hard.
But, drowsy, brushing lips against his arm
and breathing in his skin, I gaze at him
with my eyes wide and smile insisting, sweet.
His arms encircle me, I clasp my legs
around and through his legs, I stare into
his face forever, for a moment, see...
(As for the secret, which his eyes reveal
just as his lips meet mine: I drift away
on waters, hearing sounds familiar, new –
a wet exploding, cry, and then: a breath.)[Los Angeles, 4/20/91-8/29/92]
Comments