Explore Poems: Other Religions

When my grandfather was on his deathbed, he didn’t
move toward the light. At his feet, there were four…

Rama, I gave my heart to you alone.
When love takes root, do you just cut it down,
 or, darling, do…

 Just let him go! Honey, who calls a yogi her own?

He’s always indifferent to me, sister, he makes no sense.

Someday you’ll think of me, Rama, as you wander, detached.

Holding a posture, he sits quite still,…

You stood beside our god, you anointed a human king, and yet you are forever

rendered the shortest of…

Lonely, open, vast and free,
The dark'ning desert lies;
The wind sweeps o'er it fiercely,
And the yellow…

For ages long, my people have been
      Dwellers in this land;
For ages viewed these mountains,
      Loved these…

In Jangari, beyond sama na bakwai,
                    in the township of spirits, I woke up

to a drunken daylight. And strung songs of origin
                   ...

Such is their greed that no part is thrown away.
Not crown, not base, not even the eyes
gouged out from the rind by the eye-eaters.
But why do I speak ill of them? I’m no better.
When I throw away the rind my...

Lady of all powers,
In whom light appears,
Radiant one
Beloved of Heaven and Earth,
Tiara-crowned
Priestess of the Highest God,
My Lady, you are the guardian
Of all greatness.
Your hand holds the seven powers:
You lift the powers of being,
You have hung them over your finger,
You have...

Out of a pit, they've found a woman's bones— whittled by time,
bearded with dust, clutching the ambered remains of a cow.

Was she matriarch, widow, wife? Did she die struck by illness or blight?
Archeologists say her wealth and status are proven...

An extremely hubristic, unflattering, and accurate self-portrait, this episode saw Halberg in direct conversa-
tion with Cain, questioning his own methods. The passing allusion to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin appears
to reference Chapter 4, stanza XXXV: “But I myself read my bedizened /fancies,...

Raven steals your name for an autumn joke:
buries it along with you under the broadest hemlock
known to squirrel or chipmunk.
He croaks it’s too bad you were awake for the event.
He accuses you of boring him
with the same old questions over...

Many of the oldest priests were there, their ceremonial robes
in tatters but the knives they held appeared bright and recently honed.
Most of these men had not been seen in years, having with the passage
of time drifted away without offering any...

darkriver moonrise
girlrise locksdrip
firmfoot mudbank
starwheel skinflush

red
mouthswell tongueloll
breastswell hipswell
archback cockride
nailrake treebark
sunripe wombswell
cuntswell rockback
haunchsquat pullsquirt
babesquall blooddrip
sweatdrip slimedrip

devour
headfirst skullcrack
laugh

leaffall headback
laugh

you were seen mother
but there was nothing
to see

What’s Godhead—
now standing upright,
fecundity no less
I tell you more about.

Phases of the moon, you see:
an auspicious moment I’ve
come to believe in with
Shiva or some other deity.

What Greece from antiquity
bestowed upon us with an
outsider named Sikander—
Alexander the Great going

to the Indus...