In the air of Varanasi

When faith is as thin as muslin—
an easily tattered remnant woven by a
severed limb of thwarted hope,
perhaps grace will bring you to
Varanasi to melt in its air light as incense
reminding you to be nothing
so you can be nudged again
by an ancient air to remember

Varanasi is the metaphor of the architecture of self:
the accordion of ghats the staircase
of choice in your soul to descend to insatiable
funeral pyres piled with logs of impermanence,
or to ascend to a dome of transcendental realities;
the bank your consciousness on which
your breath enacts its footwork;
the boat your mind that can pull away
from the circus of its script;
the river your ever-flowing thoughts;
the bazaars the commerce of your samsara;
the plump orange marigolds the petaling of your desires;
the streets the maze of your veins echoing
a ghazal of mourning;
and what is out of sight like its brothels is the room
of your transactions you hide from the world.

Allow a ceremony of lights on the bank
of your ailing heart, its flickering reflection to
undulate in your musty mind under
the throat of a deepening blue-black sky.

The gaze of wild gods in gaudy colors sprawled on walls
will break the clay of what you know, and litter
streets with shards for the earth’s tongue to swallow,
stand by a locked doorway and find the guru
in the lock that’s turning you like a key in another direction,
allow a man in crutches to give you directions to
a hidden timeless mystic whose cool
marble blessing will torch you to rebirth.

When your words scatter like crows,
and Shiva is not the enigmatic black stone on
which you pour your grief but
rather the pouring itself, then the muslin
is repaired to a flowing azure Kanchi sari
threaded with satin-silk breath,
shimmering with the gold of grace,
pleated with the days of your life,
tucked with a pin of your nights,

And you

will fall effortlessly like a pallu from the shoulder
of a nameless goddess—patterned with her henna
ripening and fading unquestioningly.