In Katmandu

Mornings, fog in the valley

ghosts the worshipers on their way

to temple. They'll pass the butcher shops

where goat heads pile up,

their lecherous grins reminders

that desire keeps us in motion

the way wind flutters prayer flags

attached to gray strings. 

On river banks where the dying wait,

exposed to the public sun,

ideas transform reality.

What's immortal ascends in smoke, the dross

descends in ashes from river to sea.

But nothing is concluded. Once the soul is judged,

the body returns to new forms, new trials. 

Now I'm reading how Tibetan monks

strip flesh from their holy dead,

feed it to the vultures,

then make sweet music from the bones.

I don't want a new life. I'm not ready

to shed the disappointments and longings

of this one. For every particle trying to let go

there's another hanging on to grief. 

Lying here, I imagine I'm an old woman brought

by her family to the river to die.

Will I be tormented by the thoughts I have now,

how things could have come to this, myself,

a daughter who failed her mother;

myself, the mother who never understood

her children?

I read the heavens grow shabby

and the gods, too, are mortal,

the brightest realm of non-being, unattainable.

Stay awake! lamas exhort the dying,

Remember! Be aware!

Enter a new birth knowing your destination. 

I don't know any more what home is.

Events hang before me round,

small, and strange as the Christmas balls

on the hotel tree the staff trimmed all day

while the guests planned their treks

up the mountains.

Dawn, or what passes for it,

thick and wet, fills the hexagons

of the wooden shutters.

No one travels without pain,

or lives without blessing.