Elements of Composition

Composed as I am, like others,

  of elements on certain well-known lists,

father's seed and mother's egg

gathering earth, air, fire, mostly

  water, into a mulberry mass,

moulding calcium,

carbon, even gold, magnesium and such,

  into a chattering self tangled

in love and work,

scary dreams, capable of eyes that can see,

  only by moving constantly,

the constancy of things

like Stonehenge or cherry trees;

add uncle's eleven fingers

  making shadow-plays of rajas

and cats, hissing,

becoming fingers again, the look

  of panic on sister's face

an hour before

her wedding, a dated newspaper map,

  of a place one has never seen, maybe

no longer there

after the riots, downtown Nairobi,

  that a friend carried in his passport

as others would

a woman's picture in their wallets;

add the lepers of Madurai,

  male, female, married,

with children,

lion faces, crabs for claws,

  clotted on their shadows

under the stone-eyed

goddesses of dance, mere pillars,

  moving as nothing on earth

can move &mdash

I pass through them

  as they pass through me

taking and leaving

affections, seeds, skeletons,

millennia of fossil records

  of insects that do not last

a day,

body-prints of mayflies,

  a legend half-heard

in a train

of the half-man searching

  for an ever-fleeing

other half

through Muharram tigers,

  hyacinths in crocodile waters,

and the sweet

twisted lives of epileptic saints,

and even as I add

  I lose, decompose,

into my elements

into other names and forms,

  past, and passing, tenses

without time,

caterpillar on a leaf, eating,

  being eaten.