Six Poems

Gopuram

We don't know what much of it means,
though our eyes climb knowledgeably enough
the temporal face on whose sides sleep
creatures of the three worlds; they move,
our eyes, across a stocked façade towards
a sunburst at the top made, we read,
of cobra hoods - if we could see them.
What I see is ordered to within an inch
of its life: pilasters, gods, pilasters, women
alongside, preening, griffins rearing,
women underfoot; a scheme designed -
ordained - repeated to tilt us out
of comprehension, wouldn't you say?

You don't say. Your relationship is with
tapering height, ideals of light, shade; all right,
...