Pancha Maha-Bhuta

पृथिव्यापस्तेजो वायुराकाशमिति भूतानि

—Nyāya Shastra 1:1:13

Akash, Sky

You are not this.

The body you now wearwill tear like silk.

Khuda spoke, Be—and you were

a blue expanse,sinew moored to bone.

This house of stoneand mortar already falls apart.

Inside your chesta swan will silhouette against the sun—

Who looks upwhose body flies above, shadow

blackening the earth,wings beating as a heart?

Vayu, Air

A flute knifesits breath until mid–photic zonean ink cloud distorts

any sense of shade, or light.

These boulders weepand I too have become stone,

igneous, pōhaku singing volcanicsong, scree piercedby airshifts:

vent and koholā spout,parasitic zone of ash

in fast dry, and my musicsplintering into sand

of gold, gold sand of coraland bivalve bones.

The miserere nobis caughtin a humpback's cranial sinus

porpoises its tone for miles.

Sprung of darkness:air and sound.

Agni, Fire

This morning the sun summons greeninto leaves. Come fall,

they burn in reds, yellows,oranges—until, brown,

they release themselvesto dust.

You marry around a flame,you will burn as an offering in the end.

Your pyre's trees, woody now,thick in their past lives' thickets.

But for now, light a clay lamp—At noon your skin darkens

then smolders into white.

Jal, Water

Speak, so this month of monsoonblows into deluge. Look,

your torn veil cries outin the shehnai's voice,

snagged on a thorn or underKrishna's foot—that villain.

The clay pot you carryon your head he smashes with

a hurled stone, and look,your sari floods—

Naked footed, you danceon the potsherds. The Jamuna

is now swollen, is now dry.The blue god haunts the air—

a storm gathers as music.You are a clay vessel that breaks,

sweet water called back to cloud.

Prithvi, Earth

The foot's drum, a spinning body,hand molded into breath,

dissolves into carbon, nitrogen,oxygen, and phosphorus.

And what composes the thrumof the beating heart—

chemical or alchemical?What the skin envelops,

a star-nova, a universe expandsand contracts—

Don't you know this phrase,this larynx, is clay?

Even the reed at your lipsthat drinks your breath

springs from the same soilthat you

return to.