History sounds its unorchestrated Doppler
in the mournful swerve of passing events
that dirgelike attends this sprawling chronicle in
its retreat from the surface on which it was inked,
broken into its constituent tales
like states of the collective imagination,
like tiny canvasses or rows of unpatched staves,
like the still enigmas of memory –
visions from which even the abject has been drained:
an unmarked strand or a horizon without spheres,
which delirium imagines peopled
and calendared with festivals, seasons and years,
where the intellect allots with respect to kind,
where there are rhymes as long as there are tears.
If Lhasa or Vheissu exists it’s in your mind.
[Previous: The Way]