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In
the dark pavilion/ I desperately
must speak with a stranger /he waits for me, on the path/
when it is dark,
when no
one
sees/
We
speak /the
room is round / without walls,
without desire/ yet when we separate/
a
deep
sadness
you say
if someone hadn’t been waiting
for me we wld. have spoken until dawn.
*
In
the taxi/
unexpected tears/you travel
to
a
city,
a thousand miles away.
*
I'm
in the front / w. the driver/ playing it
'cool' until I exit/ you leap to the street/ the
town celebrating
'The Festival of the Mad'
I was dressed in white/ it is my festival
&
embrace
me,
your soft skin against my lips, repeated
a thousand years ago, in Japanese temple/
a
last
farewell.
Butterflies
keep dropping on my
SARANGI While bombs keep
falling on people's heads.
dear teachers
can
you
explain this
to
me?
I
contemplate
the richness of yr. love–
all the while wondering why the tortoises
in my bathtub still have not taught me:
the perfect allegories
of
dream
&
intonation.
While
we await the
metaphoric collapse
of the vast metropolis
wherein our highest aspirations
assembled themselves–
an
entire species faces
extinction, as we
sang of the
MIRACULOUS
Here, in the Vestuary
of prayer & intonation, still
Gathered the flock, of
wild
birds,
the ancients understood
as the butteflies
as the bombs
f
e
l
l
ONE
DAY, while surveying
your countenance, I came across
an unknown land/ at first afraid to enter
the portals of your periphery/ I finally took courage,
&
found myself in the oscillating warmth of
an ocean I had formerly
neglected
In
the depths of this ocean, were coral reefs
I had not noticed, fish & many mineral rocks, those minerals
were also in my blood, I found
the perception of your voice deeper than the
depths of this ocean, I followed its vibration & found myself in
a canyon of harmonic
d
i
s
c
i
p
l
i
n
e
I
heard the voices of
my
d
e
a
d
my dead poets/vividly
in communion w. this depth &
w.
you,
I
went deeper,
& found the heart of love,
inviolate,
I
went deeper
& found myself on a street
corner in NYC where once we had
met, just at that moment, I
was dancing, &
no ordinary
d
a
n
c
e
When
you called me, I missed your
call/ When you invited me, I shunned you, I don’t know why,
when we met on that street corner,
it was for eternity/ we wld. not part again
& you & I
both
k
n
e
w
IT.
Louise Landes Levi is a poet, translator and musician. Her works include translations of Rene Daumal's RASA Essays on Indian Aesthetics, Sweet on My Lips: the Love Poems of Mirabai; and her own poetry books: Guru Punk, Avenue A and Ninth Street, and Don't Fuck with The Airlines. The three poems here appear in her chapbook The Book L. Photograph by Ira Cohen.