Dogs bark themselves into the dark of their territories; the monsoon hushes to flickers of fingernails against my window, leaving the foreign silence to be invaded by chords of a foreign guitar. Voices, from the European hotel next door, rise singing, in accents varied as saris in the bazaar, songs of the American sixties. The courtyard is a mercury puddle lighted by the moon -- pearl strung between clouds -- secure over the molars of the Himalayas. I listen to their voices, as alien to the words as they are a generation too young to recall the songs they blow on the wind, asking where all the flowers are gone. I could label today trumpet vine, lantana, bougainvillea, familiar names becoming strange in this soil while bud and bloom remain the same. In the courtyard, a ruckus of vine crumbles the bricks of Shiva's smile carved above Buddha's tailored knees. I see them cross-legged on the balcony next door, puffing at the magic dragon, singing in their prismed accents of Honah-Lee accompanied by the courtyard cow's lowing bass. All the time zones I have crossed -- New York to Nepal -- are a series of circling hands pinned to the pivot of clocks on whose faces the times keep changing. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WHISTLE, AND I'LL COME TO YOU by ROBERT BURNS FOR A RETURN by A. A. ANDRIELLO NEW YORK HARBOR by PARK BENJAMIN TO LIFE by HELEN TAPPAN BERTHOFF VARIATIONS ON SAPPHO: 33 by KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY TO-NIGHT ACROSS THE SEA by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE |