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I sit beneath the Bo Tree, green figs turning
purple,
or under the sun canopy, celebrating the
reincarnation
of the Dalai Lamas. I go where minarets face Makkah
and the Ka'aba, the cube, to kiss a black stone;
where
Buddha whispers in Jokhang monastery corridors.
Down the path to a dragon, past gold sutra streamers
and inverted eaves, a deer rests. Incense hums in
Tibetan
singing bowls. Here lotus pulsates and snow flies
upward.
My train travels so high; I may smash the roof of
the world,
into splinters and shards, trapping birds in the
clouds.
On the edge of Red Square, outside St. Basil's,
cupolas,
arcs and towers rise. My eyes cross in the swirls,
stripes and glazes of onion spires, of the
eight-point star.
High casement slits reveal a dim of vaulted
passages.
A maze ends in a staircase concealed in a wall
cracked
when Soviet tanks shook the mall, rumbling, peeling
away
layers, revealing a ghost of a painting, One cannot
escape the mystery of the murals, the pentimenti.
I have searched too long to be lost inside this
puzzle
or vanish in the transparent icons of the archangel.
Past the obelisk and the chains of Hippodrome,
sensing you are near, I step slowly into a theater
of domes, ballooning, one upon another
until the Blue Mosque of Istanbul emerges, a gray
mammoth. Sunrays ignite particles hanging
over the city's red tiled roofs. In this ancient
place, you have changed, adjusting to the dark,
pupils growing larger. In all directions, rings
towers and, minarets punctuate the ever-present
crescent moons of the indigo skyline.
Ghosts trouble the Ship Meetinghouse, the stepped
gables of the Old Church. From the pointed windows
of St. Lukes in the Isle of Wight, you peer.
The blocks of the Tower at Jamestown dwell
in a cemetery fence as the veil of the Ark divides.
Scrolls open on a pedestal with the landing gear.
Prayers catch fire in the Wailing Wall. A radio
telescope
mixes tones, displaying on the screen the temples
of Rangoon and Tiruchirapalli. Rearranging pixels,
reconnecting dots, breaking the code of the unknown
language, over my bed, concentric circles spin
and explode, releasing the liquid crystals
of the supercomputer as Los Alamos.
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