The Vedic goddesses, Speech and Night
Attended me, alone in my restless bed.
When I opened my mouth and eyes to breathe
There I was in the impossible afternoon, after
My latest flummoxed death, staring at a wall of red cliffs
Dancing with clouds. It could not be, said Speech
To me from from the hidden mountain of her sister,
Kalaratri. But it was. It was and was positioned thus:
Behind me, south, a steady stream of engines burning
The refined revenants of buried sunlight, roaring;
To my left, the sun itself refueling the whole scene
Unconsciously; to my right, purpling, the eastern dream
Of spring. You cannot see the spring, can not, Speech said,
You should not even be here, overwintering. She turned;
Vak turned her tongue inside my head to tell me that she was
The source of all my hymns and dreams, all my words and visions.
Night only nodded her heavy-crowned forehead, the conqueror,
Palpable blackness, lustrous dark daughter of heaven, and said
Nothing.
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