Classic and Contemporary Poetry
KATHMANDU GUEST HOUSE, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Dogs bark themselves Last Line: On whose faces the times keep changing. Subject(s): Culture Conflict; Travel; Journeys; Trips | ||||||||
Dogs bark themselves into the dark of their territories; the monsoon hushes to flickers of fingernails against my window, leaving the foreign silence to be invaded by chords of a foreign guitar. Voices, from the European hotel next door, rise singing, in accents varied as saris in the bazaar, songs of the American sixties. The courtyard is a mercury puddle lighted by the moon -- pearl strung between clouds -- secure over the molars of the Himalayas. I listen to their voices, as alien to the words as they are a generation too young to recall the songs they blow on the wind, asking where all the flowers are gone. I could label today trumpet vine, lantana, bougainvillea, familiar names becoming strange in this soil while bud and bloom remain the same. In the courtyard, a ruckus of vine crumbles the bricks of Shiva's smile carved above Buddha's tailored knees. I see them cross-legged on the balcony next door, puffing at the magic dragon, singing in their prismed accents of Honah-Lee accompanied by the courtyard cow's lowing bass. All the time zones I have crossed -- New York to Nepal -- are a series of circling hands pinned to the pivot of clocks on whose faces the times keep changing. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING |
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