by Andrew Schelling

Two from the Sanskrit of Lady Vidya
ca. 7th– 9th centuries

As yet no sexual climax
for the lady
A lover steps into
range of her eyes

he wants a quick hug
not love’s final rapture.

She huntress, advances —
more than a casual touch

aiyii! her indecorous urge

He has entered
the pasture at her inner thigh
she claims the venison

is this not animal love?

Meter: Sardula-vikridita
Tiger’s play

by Andrew Schelling

Two from the Sanskrit of Lady Vidya
ca. 7th– 9th centuries

Poem 22

Champak tree

who constrained you to this tiny plot
in a shabby
village?

The people are witless —

they try to coax leafy greens
from bad soil

angrily
they snapped off
your branches,
now you’re a stump.

Meter: Vasanta–tilakam
Spring Ornament

by Andrew Schelling

Night came fast,
you can’t believe how cold the curtained dark.
We reach camp 5:00 pm the snakeweed
already brittle —
the elements, heigh ho the elements,
the metaphysics bare when you have ten minutes
or less to get the twisted
juniper branches lit.

Night has its needs —
sleeping bag, foam pad, the Durango
cowboy blanket with cochineal band.
Yeats says the four–beat ballad
got thrust aside by pentameter
a curtain of dark,
igneous rock forced the laccolith & poetry — ?
poetry went somewhere else

lost its heigh ho
under a slag of too much thought.

Fire, stone, sun, ice, wind,
the elements.
Tell me your dream my blue–eyed love
does it double my own
torn sleep?

Through camp a coyote
heigh ho’d past the Marmot tent

paw–track
red clay imprint in the wash.
Do you my love
study the cottonwood or stars,
and wake to the raw elements?

Here greet sun at daybreak. Kindle fire for bacon.
Coffee as the block ice melts.
Your gentle limbs sustain me, out there —
the wind and the rain
a thousand
jagged mountains west.

12:xi:2022

by Andrew Schelling

This unmortared rock wall seals
a Roman battalion off from the shaggy
tribal people north
a fur & feather–clad people
a leather and flint arrow people
listen to the rough throaty gibberish of their songs
their war–paint scares the boyish
conscripts
far from their homeland
far from Rome & the vineyards
from wine which gives you a moment of courage
the girls with mouthsize breasts
thighs smelling of almond oil
Today tiny poems get swapped
coins of friendship
at a place iron arrows bristled under the blue
fog, moon, & stench of fear

It seems impossible that a poem
can withstand lithium, cobalt
plutonium or facebook
new chemicals drip into the sea & soil
Is there a chance poems might slip a gap — ?
gap a fence or burrow under the rock
It is told in my country how
Coyote found out the secret of fences —
bob–wire let him through
a tuft of blue fur (you gotta look close) on the razor barb
he barked & it let him through
I like to believe Coyote
like these funny mangled poems of ours
outlasts petrochemicals & concrete
rises above the cold compounds of nature

that decay & disappear
but no way we live
standing on these old stone ramparts
no way we live long enough
to raise a friendly hand
to be sure.