Kundalini Splendor

poem by John Tarrant

Translating The Book of Serenity in Santa Fe

I dreamed I found a lost poem of Stanley Kunitz

on the cover of an old book

with a lot of white space and black text at angles.

In the dream I was married and

I read the poem aloud over the table at the meal.

It was about a person who got an interview with God

and spoke their question across

the swirl of hyperspace and night.

The person said, "What does it all mean,

all the…and you… grief… and wanting impossible things?"--

the question standing for other questions such as:

the snow blossoms on the cotton wood trees

and the thousands of snow geese falling out of the twilight in stages while the great sandhill cranes glide underneath,

each to a precise place in the water shining

with the last glow of sunset at Bosque del Apache,

but the translator is holding in memory many things such as

the lost papyri of the Phoenicians

and the place where the polar bears are leaving for

so in the language that crosses the turbulent dark,

only two words remain:

the question arrives as, "The dog?"

God is interested and tries,

with the means at hand,

to show the whole patter--

the response travels back through immensity

and comes out, "Woof.""Woof," says God, "Woof."

and that will have to do.

My wife was not convinced by the poem,

but when I woke up it was still here

in my chest,

though most of the words could

not cross over into waking.

John Tarrant

# posted by Dorothy : 5/21/2009 04:25:00 PM