From Tibet to India they come
pilgrims of the plateau putting
knees, hips then chest to the dirt,
cupped palms raised overhead.
Then, up again: calloused
hands, mountains etched in the eye,
this fathom-length step all the way
to the divining-place.
Or a place of reckoning, a
wager become a truth. But what
happened there? Everything, and
—nothing, though that is not much
use to the Chinese truck-drivers
who leave them robed in dust.
Nightfall, and a happy ache of
bones and their tempered symmetry
in the raising and lowering of this
bivouac of faith. Behind them,
vertical fires marking the far
horizon
a hundred pyres of flesh
and bone, lighting their way.
whispered lineage 