Deep below earth, clay and sand, deep below roots and aquifers, it lies in wait. Like that silent coyote stalking her white-tailed deer through the brush, it waits patiently and with the purity of Assisi. When Francis of Assisi preached to the birds, the rams, the donkeys, that Harlem backbeat was waiting. The rhythm of India and the echoes of conch. Where Mumtaz sleeps beside Shah Jahan, where ivory towers watch ivory crowns waiting behind ivy walls. Like Cardinals, like a lighthouse on the rocky cliffs of Maine, they watch and wait. From Hibbing down to Cairo and from Cairo to old Cave-in-Rock. Where the Nolichucky waters run crisp and clear, the man in the Panama hat strums and sings and knows he’ll never fall. Goodnight, Taj Mahal Icebergs in Midwestern winter chill come faster and faster comes the wind, the snow, the flying leaves over fallow fields. Empty snowflakes watch and watch with banjo strings the chestnut air of November. And when the man cakewalks into town, when the tuba sets the pace, we see stars and the eclipse, we dance the dance of aurora borealis, and remember Assisi’s dance. Who but the saint of Italian imagination could free the leper’s corroded soul? And as his hands bled, ours bled too. Light passes through our collective palms, and light passes through the chestnut air of November, but it sure don’t mean a natural thing. The man in the Panama hat descends steps of Eremo Delle Carceri, wanders with Paul who was Saul. Goodnight, Taj Mahal On the road to Damascus, Paul who was Saul fell blind from his mount. He fell blind from the light of conversion. In the shadows of the snowy Lebanon Range, he waited for the rhythm of India and he waited for direction. Sailing to Puteoli, he waded through the waves of Malta and dragged chains while anchors sank. Paul prayed to Christ and Rhea Silva. Twelve centuries battered by Euroclydon winds, twelve centuries of eastward glances, and Francis bled like Christ. The palms of humanity split open and wept their tears of blood onto Assisi’s white roses. Blood pumped to the rhythm of blackest Indian night. But Mary of Bethany, don’t you weep for your brother. Don’t weep for the man in the Panama hat. Goodnight, Taj Mahal In train stations, barns, Down dead-end streets, Paul’s gale force winds lie in wait. Sleepers on station benches, entrenched in quilted newsprint, wait for winter winds to cease. They wait for the rhythm of India and echoes of the conch to resonate in marble halls and resonate with the riders of the world. And in Il Buco del Diavolo, Assisi slept with Italian sparrows, the Italian wall lizards, the Italian bleak. They kept each other happy, winsome and warm in the devil’s hole. And the wall lizard freed the leper’s empty soul. Like a free song falling on freedom’s sloppy ears, we fly from tree to tree. All while the man in the Panama hat rode off on a broke-down mule, so slow and small. Goodnight, Taj Mahal In dilapidated barns of Commerce, Cornelia, and Dillard, in the shells of burned-out houses, in dark alleys filled with the ghosts of razor-wielding cut-throats, the western wind whips and whines. It winds around the seven Roman hills. Where Rhea Silva met Mars and her Apennine twins were suckled by the Etruscan she-wolf, the western wind reverberates with the melodies of India and Harlem. When Tallulah Gorge split open and sang, the winds sang too. They blew to dark Tuckahoe caves of Inwood Hill. The man in the Hawaiian shirt counted one hundred and twenty-five words per stanza, knowing there would be no more and absolutely no less. The grey-bearded man in the Panama hat rode a mule that never missed the water in his stall. Goodnight, Taj Mahal In the hour of salt and snow, a dash of flavor that was Edith puts finger to lips, secreting that melody of the wind. Hushed and hidden, the melody lies forgotten. The salt of Edith spills across the cities of the plains and across the great Ghor of Jordan. Towards the Dead Sea it runs carrying the melody of the wind. Towards the boot-heal of Ionian quietude, it runs. The silent spine where Assisi slept keeps mum the riddle of Lot. From Clingman’s Dome to Baldpate and from Middleberry to the blood of Killdeer Mountain where Sitting Bull, Gull, and Inkaduta stood strong. Halleluiah, the man in the Panama hat rings clear those new, new Easy Rider Blues: long, loud, and eternal, forever to call. Goodnight, Taj Mahal We fertilize those fallow fields with our gaze, carry the nexus of the universe between our shoulder blades. Beating on his ribcage like a talking drum, beating on windows like hailstones flying from those fields bewildered and naked, he’s done the dense dance of ennui weighed down by lonely boredom. Every hour counts its holocaust in tiny ashbins of truth and yesterday. In the gelatoria, the salumeria, the bowels of the forno, they pray to Assisi for guidance. They call to the saints to intervene. They climb those storied steps to Trinità del Monti and gaze through opened palms. Who was that masked man recycling blues and wearing his Panama hat, emissary from the violent first day? From the crying eyes of Charles de Gaul? Goodnight, Taj Mahal From those crying eyes of Charles de Gaul, we count days with each tear-lined cheek. When Hirohito cried his A-Bomb tears into the A-Bomb ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they washed away the terror of surrender. And Peter cried bitterly, uncontrollably. And the tears carved canyons down Peter’s face. And Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus like mermaids, like sobbing human seals. When Assisi received the gift of tears, he looked east for guidance. Turning eyes toward Yamuna, toward The Ganges, he begged for guidance. The man with the steel guitar and the Panama hat cried his river of love for big legged women. He received the gift of tears for his sins and the sins of the world. The sins of the world. Goodnight, Taj Mahal
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