Spirits Distilled

The Color of Nepal’s Flag

77 The Color of Nepal’s Flag The final shadow may close my eyes, carry me off from white of day, unchaining my soul at the hour of its anxious obsequious desire —Francisco de Quevedo An osprey swoops and gathers breakfast Squawking good morning good morning good morning As he lifts into a sun that bobs across waves One leapfrogging the other In a frenzied game of king of the hill Splashing off the backs of horseshoe crabs Washed up and entrenched along shore’s edge Like a dark brown line of defense Between this and some other world. In a moonlit garden a crown prince is convulsing, The amnesia of hashish and bourbon on his breath His mouth a hollow painter’s palette With bubbles the color of Nepal’s flag Streaming down his chin Spilling onto the palace’s unsoiled grounds, Its storied kinship, its opulent mythology. Here in Kathmandu some say his father, The king, was Vishnu incarnate An avatar, a keeper of Brahma’s promise. Some say his mother, the queen, Was a pillar between son and fiancée, An outsider from a lower rung Daughter of a rival clan. Some say “It was an accidental firing Of an automatic weapon. Seven members of the royal family are dead.” 78 In a moonlit garden the crown prince remembers Nothing of the smell of gunpowder on his fingers And the M-16 stretched across his lap Is silent in its warmth, as if melting Into the language of his battle fatigues. Mother, father, sister, brother All silent as the dust That now flees Friday evening stars. When he removes his right hand From his left breast pocket Devyani’s folded face rises From his palm, her eyes appearing to speak In a hush he has carried for twelve years, Since the night his thoughts first allowed The word princess to swim through his veins, To dance like wonder inside his blood. What are you saying, he asks, what are you saying? As the trigger collapses her voice bellows Throughout the countryside From the Tarai to the Himalayas and back again Until thousands have gathered in the streets Shouting for answers they do not want to hear. 79 When I look up, the fish is still impaled Beneath the osprey’s ribs, Alive and sometimes flapping dazed, Knowing if he breaks loose he will be home again. If not, he has seen for the first and last time What breathes beyond water’s plane— The sun drugging the three of us While eight horseshoe crabs march towards me, Their shells as hard as helmets of palace guards Rushing to save what has already been lost, Their shells as warm as lids of polished urns Protecting the remains of a wooden funeral pyre. ...