ANDY CLAUSEN

 

 

Gokyo Lake Breaking Up In The Sun

 

 

Is that the sound of 10,000 birds barking like mountains?

No.

Is that the sound of outerspace, the other-never-heard

     by-us-world?

No.

Perhaps then, it's 13 sacred cannons firing huge flaming

     balls of redemption in our Path?

No! No,

It is just Gokyo Lake Breaking Up in the Sun.

 

Is that an avalanche like sin punishment & emptiness

     unknown?

Is that a real avalanche a Loudness birthing Eternal

     Silence through its renting stone Cervix?

Is this the iron irony of molten medicineless

     miniscule buried alive Death?

No, Gokyo Lake is Breaking Up in the Sun.

 

Are these the whirring teeth of mechanical contraband

     come to take the high trees?

The motorbikes of Bangkok angry at the rushing

     minutes lost?

New York honking its collective gridlock worldwide?

Is it a freeway collapsing in my Home Town?

Is it the 5th horseman?

No, listen, It is Gokyo Lake Breaking Up in the Sun,

     listen!

 

Has the Ganges decided to flow into Tashkent & form

     a moat around Moscow before emptying into the

     freezing waters twixt Finland & Leningrad

     causing untold relentless havoc?

Has a monster finally found its Form?

Is Los Angeles about to implode thru the yak dung

     stoves?

Is it an Earth Quake?

A fierce revengeful Dakini I did wrong?

Is it all my previous had-to-be-horrible incarnations

     come up to vomit me into a hell

     only I could conceive?

No, It is only Gokyo Lake Breaking Up in the Sun.

 

What is this jade?

This ultra reflection vibrating liquid

     doing for free all a gem's intended to do?

My musings are vanquished by the Loudness

Has the mountain we walk on fallen in?

Have Sagarmatha's glaciers calved?

Has the sky storming herds of yak

     driven by reincarnations of murdered monks?

Has the colossal energy of might-have-beens

     self immolated like war heads

     along the crumbling ridge?

Has peace been broken like eggs in the nest?

Is that growl a genocidal demonic tractor or bulldozer?

No, In the Sun Gokyo Lake Breaks is All

Why are you not convinced?

Why won't you take the Answer?

 

What?  Aren't those tribal drums?

     multiplying?

Isn't there a bloody revolution in the bottom of my shoes?

Aren't gongs struck in my sentient temples?

Has the moon left for keeps?

Answer me!

What is that catastrophic coughing from a wounded lion

     large as Cho-Oyu?

Who is that wheezing far away man?

 

Hey You!

Those drums are the beatings of your heart

     older than its many moons

Those gongs are the clangorous reverbs

     of your locomotive lungs

Your money changer purged temples are filled

     with the blood of the masses

     of uncelebrated martyrs

That is you coughing & you are no lion

     shimi shimi

That wheezing far away man is just the sound

     of Gokyo Lake Breaking Up in the Sun.

 

A woman strong & beautiful drags you to the top

     for your audience

     with the Mother of the Universe.

 

 

Gokyo, Gokyo-Ri, 18,000 ft.

with big view of Sagarmatha (Everest)

Nepal, December 1989