Out of the dark it whirls back
into a darkly mysterious house.

Is it the earth within?
Does it keep us waking, give brief respite?

Like a hard crossword puzzle
it sets riddles
crowding against one another:

the thunders trailing around hatchet-faced banana leaves,
a front gate limp with dew,

the acid sounds of a distant temple bell,
the wet silent night of a crow that hangs in the first sun.

Is the dawn only a way through such strange terrain?
The frenzy of noise, which a silence recalls

through companions lost, things suddenly found?
There is a dawn which travels alone,

without the effort of creation, without puzzle.
It stands simply, framed in the door, white in the air:

an Indian woman, piled up to her silences,
waiting for what the world will only let her do.