TRAVEL POEM

George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014–2016), is the author of twenty-seven books of poetry. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he taught for thirty-two years. 

“This poem was inspired by my research in India, where I spent several months in 1994 focusing on various lineages of sadhus, holy men and women,” he says. “I was fascinated by their unencumbered spiritual pursuits, as they daily faced life and death in a land where even the most sacred of rivers in which people bathed—the Ganges—presented health risks. These and other paradoxes offered a bridge into examining dichotomy, urging me to query the possibility of neutralizing opposites.” 

Varanasi Is Another Name for the World

A sadhu carries a lamp to the Ganges,

unwinds his long hair into the river.

The Milky Way glitters in mud, twigs,

snags of carp, and ashes of millions.

Were they content over the evening dal?

Did they like tea? How were they touched?

Varanasi is another name for the world.

Ganga, for the mother of the world.

You count goats on the steps of the bathing ghat

and consider a new profession.

Maybe the chai wallah understands

the goats better than the goatherd?

New constellations form in the pail. Sagittarius

is not a mineral deficiency detailed in stools.

Whenever opposites attract, cobblestones shift a little and

the street curves inward at an almost undetectable slope.

You wander old Muslim neighborhoods on Madanpura

on your way to Chowk, sense the love of God even in cooking meat.

See how smoke from cremation grounds speckles the river?

You want to step in, but you’ve seen the dead cow.

You’ve seen the purple corpse when you took the boat.

You’ve seen the men urinating against the wall.

Where is the gold carp, and where is your foot?

How might you bathe in the river without getting in?