My march through the relative silence of nine years
Has brought me to a small house
With a green garden
Two daughters
A son and
A wife.
Where are my parents?
Where are my uncles and cousins?
Not to mention aunts?
They are gone.
Vanished.
Transformed
Turned into frogs and birds.
Where are my friends?
I don’t have any
I won’t pretend.
I ever did –
Not really.
Cats and dogs!
It’s me
In my house
With a well-kept garden
Occasionally, two daughters visit
And from time to time a son.
My wife
Is the source of these other people
We brought them into the world together.
(Well, she laboured,
But I helped.)
We’ll be even older soon enough;
In our 70s
In this house
With its pretty garden
And on special occasions
Two daughters and a son will visit
With their families…
Probably.
Then, if all goes well
I will disappear, too and
My wife will remain here
Without me.
In this house with its garden,
A little more unkempt
And I hope they visit her often,
My two daughters, and my son
And bring along her grandchildren.
+
Tomorrow, for our protection;
To protect this little house
And its green garden,
In the morning
I will make a mandala.
I will walk around the block
6 times widdershuns
While muttering to myself
And spinning in the dust.
And in the evening
I will wind around the clock
6 times deosil,
While murmuring under my breath
And hopping into puddles.
And I’ll thump my stick as I walk
Once for every year
I’ve been alive
And jump over imaginary clouds.
I’ll thump sixty times
Cursing those with the evil eye
Through my long moustache,
Spraying the air
And banging my stick
While whistling a sinister tune;
If you heard it you would shiver.
And for every day I have been alive
I will chant a Tantric mantra:
Om vajrapani hum! Om vajrapani hum! Om vajrapani hum!
And so, break the jar of my memory open
And so, stamp away my silly disappointments
And so, admit my cruelties and failures
And so, shake off the weight I carry needlessly
And so meet every curious look with a glare
And forked fingers.
By Phil Hall