"...A thousand pilgrims strain
Arm, shoulder, breast and thigh, with might and main,
To drag that sacred wain,
And scarce can draw along the enormous load.
Prone falls the frantic votaries in its road,
And calling on the God,
Their self-devoted bodies there they lay
To pave his chariot-way.
On Jaga-Naut they call,
The ponderous Car rolls on, and crushes all.
Through flesh and bone it ploughs its dreadful path.
Groans rise unheard: the dying cry,
And death and agony
Are trodden underfoot by yon mad throng,
Who follow close, and thrust the deadly wheels along."

--Robert Southey, The Curse of Kehama (1810)

   "Outsourced Epic"

This stain will not rinse out, though years may try;
Stained is our flag, our hands, & eke our art.
Like ranked sleepwalkers marching we charged the cliff,
And too much broken crowns the catafalque.
Daily i hear a tide turning, gladly i hear
Speech restored, & yet we are still astray
In a cloud that's drastic dark; & we have burned
Wheatfields of choices to play the fate-denier.

10 16 03

   "Sleep in the Mojave Desert

Out here there are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly
On the mind's eye erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit these leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That glide ahead of the very thirsty.

I think of the lizards airing their tongues
In the crevice of an extremely small shadow
And the toad guarding his heart's droplet.
The desert is white as a blind man's eye,
Comfortless as salt. Snake and bird
Doze behind the old maskss of fury.
We swelter like firedogs in the wind.
The sun puts its cinder out. Where we lie
The heat-cracked crickets congregate
In their black armorplate and cry.
The day-moon lights up like a sorry mother,
And the crickets come creeping into our hair
To fiddle the short night away."

--Sylvia Plath

Listening to: Wolff & Hennings- Tibetan Bells (1971)