Vox Populi
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Diane di Prima: Buddhist New Year Song
I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I
brought down with me
to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden
make precious and mythical somehow, it is our nature,
and it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
the golden mask I had seen before, that fitted
so beautifully over your face, did not return
nor did that face of a bull you had acquired
amid northern peoples, nomads, the Gobi desert
I did not see those tents again, nor the wagons
infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains,
so cold, every star in the sky was a different color
the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing
but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come
I could not remember (then) what our purpose was
but remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawn
in the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold light
revealed the “mindborn” worlds, as simply that,
I watched them propagated, flowing out,
or, more simply, one mirror reflecting another.
then broke the mirrors, you were no longer in sight
nor any purpose, stared at this new blackness
the mindborn worlds fled, and the mind turned off:
a madness, or a beginning?
~~~~
Copyright © 1990 by Diane di Prima. From Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (City Lights Books, 1990)
Diane di Prima (1934 – 2020) published more than 40 books. Her poetry collections include This Kind of Bird Flies Backward (1958), the long poem Loba (1978, expanded 1998), and Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (2001). She is also the author of the short story collection Dinners and Nightmares (1960), the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Beatnik (1968), and the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (2001). With Amiri Baraka, she co-edited the literary magazine The Floating Bear from 1961 to 1969. She co-founded the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets Institute. A follower of Buddhism, she also co-founded the San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing Arts. Di Prima was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2009.
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I was struck by this:
“did not see those tents again, nor the wagons
infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains,
so cold, every star in the sky was a different color
the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing
but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come”
I think because I am a Kansas Boy…plus, the mystical/mythical thrust of the poem demanded repeated reading, and this notion I’d never considered, that, “every star in the sky was a different color”
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A poem that has such an internal ordering within its terms, and a poet dealing with consciousness as one might deal with a wildfire broken out in her kitchen or backyard, threatening all existence. I am placed inside my own awe in her presence, & her “mindgrown” world, wondering as well, is this a “madness or a beginning?” At this moment in the year, I could believe in either.
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Sean, your comments on the poems in VP are often perfect poems in their own right. Thank you! I love this poem by di Prima — I’ve often thought she has been given short shrift as one of the major Beat poets. She had a lyric gift that is very different than that of her male counterparts, more musical, less topical, less angry.
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Sean, you said it all.
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