The Stringing of the Bow

Driving in the American West, reading Celan
and the Mahabharata. After the war,
Arjuna drops the bow forged by Brahma back
into the ocean, relinquishing it
to the gods. Before drowning
in the Seine, Paul Celan wrote that the beloved
is an “arrowy one.” Brahmic time is cyclic
and malleable. A blue dress billowed
against an indigo sky. Colorblind
and arthritic, the pregnant mother milked
before searching for her twins, before being
hit by the Bronco. This time, no one
lives next to the slaughterhouse. The smoldered barn
still stands, and the echo of the escaped two-headed
calf rotates around a truck that hasn’t had a passenger
in decades. Someone in the farming town remarked,
it looks like a Hindu god. Time and love’s arrows
inevitably veer from each nock. A hole in the heart,
not for a leak, but a window to let in more light
and the warm storm. Where are you
going? I drive on the highway, past
bored animals: How much of our mortality
is an accident? The beloved is a sharpness.
The beloved has an arc. Time createth all things
and Time destroyeth all creatures, I underline at the gas station
in the Mahabharata. In a parallel universe, Celan,
shoes filled with water, is drawn onto the bridge, his heart,
resuscitated, cold, and alive. Verse after verse, I’ve prayed
in round and rearview mirrors. Blessed with multiple
faces. I take a turn off course. I am so afraid
of ends.