Selected poems from 'Tabular Rasa' by Jeff Raheb

Havana       Paro Dzhong - Bhutan       Dal Lake - Kashmir       Bamboo       The Center       I Pour You A Cup Of Tea       For The Women Of Bosnia       You Say It Is Raining       Zimbabwe       The Comet       Pygmalion       Ganges       Nasca - Peru       Zu Twa Szi       Body Rain       The Shadow Puppet (Jogjakarta )                       Songkla - Thailand       5 Haikus

Ganges We arrive in darkness amidst the Mahabarta and the Ramayana The Ganges swallows all Holy river Women line the ghats singing offering prayers Puja for the living Puja for the dead Dirty river The river swallows all dead cows and Brahmins floating ashes the thousand petals of devotees, flowers and urine plastic bottles and incense bodies not cremated purifying offerings of food Sari's bleeding their wearer's colors like gossip into the drowning river into the holy thickness Prayers unearthly mumbling and beating drums sliding into the morning ocean of Hinduism dusk comes secretly revealing a face, a hand light interwoven with dark The thousand colored Hindus everywhere body after body a flock of parrots dream-like vision The sounds of firecrackers and flutes amongst women chanting and water washing away the world as I knew it In the miracle of sunrise I begin to see the smells and taste the sounds of divine worship surrounding me thick as the Ganga Night has passed In reverence Copyright 2004 Jeff Raheb