Abundance and Extinction

The walled city, the grand intuition laid to rest, the abundance squandered as the great summer holds us captive. Would that my words were richer (for you). The extinction of forms we once knew, memory like a forgotten hat on the train, the sense of it all now only smoke in our hands, a stain on our fingers, the smell of tobacco loosely lingering on your old coat. The empty plot next to the library in the old country is probably now all glass and steel. 

The breath out of time, keeps pace at the last turn. The squalor of a mind without 'givenness', priors. The night-words at 3 a.m. still clinging to the dream-world, fresh from the first beginnings of the heart's radiance, like little H repeating a word five times until you turn your head to notice what's always been there...

And the blue mourned the loss of the red.

Draw up the list of what belongs to who, and who to what. "Marriage only lasts ten days," KP said. "I sit under a tree by the river and watch my life go by." The river has dried up, like our words and feelings. Sixty, seventy years ago-or so the swami says-there were crocodiles there and now the lush grass has grown so thickly over the bed that buffaloes freely roam over the lost parts of river. Within a single lifetime what is known with the surety of our senses becomes a memory. When we were children did we only imagine we saw a river? Only when there's a starless sky can you hear it murmur again. 

The plant world faces extinction, the myriad names slipping by, down far into the obscure pages of a dusty and soon-to-be obsolete book. There was more than enough for everyone, there always was. 

The term draws to a close. You prepare for the last rituals with nothing much to show for it. And yet none of that bothers you at this time. What would you write, and for who? 

More importantly: wild garlic in the morning, barley with gur in the evening, an unsurpassed summer drink. Apples (imported..I know, I know)and fresh cherries but even better: a watermelon and lemon blitz. This is the time when there's an incredible variety of seasonal fruits: plums and peaces, too. Jamun for two weeks, dry on your tongue. Then by 15th June (there is a precise day) mangoes. If you've only had the awful south American version you've missed out on one of life's great pleasures, for can anything beat the king, Sher Shah Suri's chaunsa?