In the wake,
the white flowers
thrown high against blue
in wishes for the dead-
they flew as doves
amid chanting.
-
Into the rivers
as we washed out
from us this sordid sin,
made new in the muddied waters
we prayed-arms upstretched
in a gesture like submission
to the sky and the clouds
as the sands blew
with the breeze.
-
The infectious water,
a fevered thing
as it ran down us,
quelching small
yearnings of the devil
we harbor in our
fragile slanting ribs.
The language drifted languid
as we didn't understand
as it took shapes
never seen before
and our western
weakness was washed out.
-
This purging in the wake
as the pyres burned brilliant in the
foreground- the licking flames
a crown upon the whitened
masses as they stumbled through
the river's sanctity.
-
In the heat
with the sweat pouring as water
the soft chanting of the
trees and sky upon
the lips of the dead
came unto us
and on our knees
in the river
we murmured
our purging words
skyward.
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