Ranakpur

Rajasthan, India

In the dust beneath the banyan tree

I began to hear how voices

ringing from the knot of turbaned men

built palaces on desert air.

The caller hammered out his chant;

the circle caught it, held it, wound it

on their anvils with a stronger strain

and sent the whole song back to him.

And if, I thought, my own tympanum

had hands to make of these refrains

some welded, lasting thing, a stone

to shape with care and take away,

I would touch it, gilding, to the grains

of music piled up in my ear.

I will begin with the dust.

SAUDADES

is what my student said he'd feel for me

upon returning to Brazil, and how

he felt right then, in fact, about the place

he'd left behind. He spoke the word as if

it were the loneliest, most dignified

sound that human tongues had ever wrapped

themselves around, his face aflame with that

peculiar pride in the untranslatable.

But still we tried to find some semblance

of an English shape: a pining when applied

to absent people, or homesickness

where the land's at stake. And although I

- who have no Portuguese-could only take

away a faint, imperfect imprint, I press

it here for you to see, knowing as I do

that love in any language comes out clear.