Haibun Collection
By William Dennis
India
Delhi Durbar
"We are even inclined to believe that a poet receives more than one life just because he is able to walk the streets
of a city that existed two thousand years ago."*
Not so long ago, but...long.
of a city that existed two thousand years ago."*
Not so long ago, but...long.
This stony land of sweet wells is love of the Beloved;
But for beauty’s need to see, we could not have eyes. Larks or locusts or singing sand fill each place’s moments; Stunned wonder and insight glance the same back from a mirror. |
The man who stationed himself at the cross-walk of Connaught Circle closest to us was considered by certain others as lucky. The disease had eaten his fingers, which elicited steady sympathy from passers-by in the form of small coins. For these he had a cup. But caught unaware or un-hopeful, he took my unexpected coin in the paddle of his hand.
no help no hands
the leper drops my coin among dry stones |
Yet another had found success in the mendicant trade, where a dependable flow of tourists passed on the round-about. The suggestion of hare-lip and boxer-injury to the nose distorted his countenance. But central to his appeal was cheerful retardation. That disfigurement, unfeigned as the rest, evoked a flow of pity and coin from pedestrian traffic. Even taxi trade unbent in his direction. He was young and strong. A generation before he would have been welcome to pursue each meal in the day labor market of the city or in his native place. As he aged, improvident, he would have fallen on increasingly hard times until he broke. In his present circumstances, age could only ornament.
unfortunately
lucky enough to look bad on a good corner |
Raja Jai Singh II, of Jaipur, was a frequent sight at the Delhi Court in the late eighteenth century. Currents of inquiry were infiltrating from Europe and the ancient delicacies of astrology were being revivified by revelations in the realm of astronomy. It was an hour on horse-back, one would imagine, from the Emperor’s Red Fort to the fields he gave for the construction of a stuccoed brick-work observatory, laid out with absolute correctness, according to the wisdom of the day. How humbling to climb the multitude of lime-white stairs, which curve to the motions of the stars, thinking that even at such a late date, I could not understand the significance of the observation posts and markers. And then to find within me the urge to slide on my seat the first half of the way back down the narrow precipice of knee-high steps. The ancient observatory is a white-washed testament to inquiry’s spirit and brick-layer’s art. It is so great a shame this impulse came too late to empire, when arrogance at center was cutting it off from strength in the surrounding land. Funds for maintenance are not adequate; holes have appeared here and there. In one of the highest, the green parrakeet had made its nest, fully appreciating one remaining function which ancient wonders may serve.
two Alexandrines
flying catenaries palm-top to tower every bit as lost as the peasants who built it –in Jantar Mantar **so long in service– old geometry the ancient observatory worked out in plaster and stone –its stars drifted off –telling old futures |
Even as Christians and Hindus we were infidels. We left our shoes in the care of an elderly man at the defensible gate one climbs to, up the fan of stairs. How much more infidel as we entered the Friday Mosque, the Jama Masjid, of the Emperor Shah Jahan--the largest mosque in the world. The southern tower of stone drew us up from morning’s heat, through dark, toward a light.
I bind myself so loosely in prayer, edit my acts so,
I would limp away from the doors of Lourdes, not having knocked. Knowledge knows not what it claims, worship is a hopeless faith; Shaking out napkins, servants cast world and the faith away. in the minar cool hundreds of stairs all worn low in the center |
Beveled arrow-slits give increasingly distant views of the city, jumbled beyond Chandi Chowk.
wondering half-way
what legs his faith must give the mueddin |
Spiraling out at the cupola, we were caught and contained by a screen of pierced marble, which held no image of God’s creation. It rose chest high, as we were brought to our knees by perspective. Air moved with sudden force and chill through the tight weave of my shirt.
lacking faith to stand
where centuries of mueddin leaned into the cold wind |
The power that raised the minar of Jama Masjid has lain for centuries--dust in its walled court. Pigeons settle at the rim of the central pool, where the flowing water is kept green with their droppings. The shelving margin makes no reflection. Thin sounds from the waiting city climb two stories over the wall.
the dustless pool
gives back Jama Masjid as it first got it When faith tugs my button, impiety takes my sleeve; Finished in the Kaaba, I face the Church as I leave. |
Those not sweepers or pi dogs drift slowly on early tangents, not to stir winter morning through the stuff of shawl and scarf; these muffle the voice and somewhat filter the air. The first, cautious breaths of the day will be cleanest.
the sweeper’s long broom
feels in a chilly puddle for something to sweep mouth and nose covered with scarves in the morning but all day pollution watching air roll behind New Year’s Day busses –holding the breath |
Dust brindle or mange–a slim-wristed dog trots across the road to greet another, making nothing of a first scooter buzzing toward the outer circus.
skinny bitch
turning back again to check her pups |
At the office I used to feel exhausted by the number of faces thrust into mine, all demanding something.
she won’t
look away that woman with the baby looking all worn out the beggar’s useful baby meets me face to face |
One remembers Basho’s boy of Fuji and reflects on reincarnation, incarnation, carnation (so to speak), and nation.
Xmas day
the beggar boy puts out his hand |
Going to visit Shah Jahan, some centuries late, we dress warmly in sweaters for a motor ride to the Red Fort. Armies built and pillaged the palace that was the greatest seat of the Moghal empire. Thoughts of holiday gifts and giving are put out of mind as we buy what they still have to sell to tourists. A small ticket allows us all we can take away.
The great gate bends necks, which humble gates accomplish by their size, as well.
The great gate bends necks, which humble gates accomplish by their size, as well.
at the high gate
Zamzamah and his brother –erect as door-posts |
It’s last conquerors pillaged the white flagging of the inner court--that was the provident, impecunious British, come to carry the wealth of the Indies. That marble paved their new Calcutta. Nesting birds and weather un-mortar stones in the hall for music and recitation. Surely there was stucco, when poets gathered for mushaira–to compete before the Shah.
between red stones
of the Drum House wall–parakeets shriek claim |
Easy arm’s reach, standing on the minister’s inlaid platform--tiptoe stretch from the marble floor--there is yet the high throne I shuffled before in the Hall of Audience. While he lived, Zauq, advisor in the composing of verse to Emperor Bahadur Shah, disapproved of Ghalib’s manner of verse and of life; it is here Mirza Asadullah Khan must have stood to pursue the hopeless suit to regain his father’s fortune.
His very foot-prints have volition to reveal themselves:
Dusty fiduciaries for the union of two worlds. His name on a stone centers creation over the earth, Bending the sky down forever in every direction. |
Rubbing my feet on the paving squares yielded a tingling in the soles, which would not spread to my hand.
Diwan-e Am
before the high seat dust in Ghalib’s foot-prints In the Emperor’s pitched pavilion, poets draw their corks; Lord, let this flow not go dry, leaving me sober alone. Brazen day has swung open upon the bright heap of stars, An extravagant dower, such as an idol might keep. Though she speaks the rhyme of birds, though I translate not one vowel, This little wealth is enough, that the seraph’s face breathes close. How grief darkens the night! How affliction alights on my rib! How long the stars turn away from the place where I lie! |
No shod foot must have stood on the marble banks and bed of the Stream of Paradise before it ran dry. The royal pavilion now seems modesty, studded with extravagance. Small holes remain where gems were pried out of the wall. One, dropped by Amir Khusrau, would fit no sack:
"If There Is Heaven On Earth
–It Is Here, It Is Here. It Is Here." ** one match the match woman the thousandth reflection stays in the Hall of Mirrors in the hall of Mirrors without reflection Height, width, depth, curve, color and brightness enter the mirror Clangorously–insight scattering, judgment muffling. No one dares argue–your mirror does not do you justice; Idols and icons are small shards of that dull reflection. |
Nowhere is the historical link between the polities of India and Britain more evoked than in divergent attitudes typical of the two civilizations, which on the round-abouts are brought more to the fore.
a wave
of taxis meets a stream of rickshaws |
My daughters are the creations of my pen, in a way, though they recoil at the thought. It was ink, which dissolved the matrix and extracted them from Delhi’s lanes to become scion-wood on my stock.
My dear Asad, as we know, humor and love both are cruel;
Neither phlegm nor bowel, as we have known, is what it has been. |
So many call her "mother" but Mother Theresa has given me five children, an act of greatest intimacy and confidence. Sishu Bhawan, House of Peace, is her name for the home she makes in a suburb; there all the fatherless, motherless infants are sheltered for whom foreign adoption is a possibility. My daughters cried bravely to overcome the humiliation of their origins. The doors of the house opened on many little sisters and brothers, all of whom reached eagerly for the older girls. We could leave only with greatest effort. Who can remain indifferent when returning home?
Catholic orphanage
at Xmas boy twins look like the taxi driver |
As we came from a distance, background phenomena stood to the fore–the intensity of light and the brilliance of color. Day leached savor from pastels, beige and three-color weave. Clothing bought where the sun illuminates from an oblique angle seemed dull. Women have squeezed prisms for pigment.
bland green parakeets
with pale pink collars flap past girls in bright saris young man swatting air butterflies and bees drawn to her Pongal sari |
Pongal is a January holiday in the Dravidian south and for southerners living among the Aryans of the north, for which new clothes are given. The great railways are strong currents, mixing the sediments of an ancient littoral. As the British were instrumental in creating India, which had no conscious existence before them, and even though it is an unaccomplished process, no mean credit is acquired to set against the failings of empire.
Everything is sold on the street and in railway terminals.
Everything is sold on the street and in railway terminals.
Hot! he cries once
three feet of coffee steaming between two glasses sloth bear gets up with a ring in his nose and dances but not much |
Theater lives in the street, not to say prospers, as it has not lived in the west since Shakespear’s day. In addition to momentary human drama–life often, and death, to the participants–there are troupers with monkeys, bears and snakes. The distracted eye is torn between their show and spectacle-draymen with camels or buffalo...and always processional elephants.
dusty buffalo
lifts her slow nose over my auto-rickshaw snake charmer killing another cobra –slowly with music he thought he taught the mongoose not to kill the snake suga says Sita and dancing bear dances but man gets the money the boy who shines shoes runs an idle brush over his own |
From outside the small hotel of which, in an earlier day, we occupied a fifth floor room, a wandering bell called us to our window. A poor man followed by his wife, sauntered up; she was far advanced in pregnancy. On her head she bore an unpainted cabinet of substantial wood, balanced with one hand, gracefully–and she rang a bell. Citizens of India are accustomed to hardship’s appearance; thus they may be subject to the occasional expression of callousness, which is an embarrassment to them and their guests, be they only drivers of rickshaws. But this man’s bell drew a gradual crowd to real drama. Being no actor, having no skill, he was forced to fall back on the color of his blood to stir pity’s pence from foot-traffic. How many times is an actor slain without leaving a mark?
Receiving his assistance to lower her cabinet to the earth, his wife drew the early few assembled watchers to her opening of its doors. A shrine was revealed, lurid with divinity, a peacock’s long feather...and she lit incense. Her husband received an inch-wide strip of red cloth, which he hitched about his left arm so that it trailed the elbow. Rising along the muscle of his upper arm, each eye was naturally drawn to many peaks of cicatrix, where vaccination ought someday to mark the arm of the child his wife carried. The Himalaya have many points, impress the traveler and seem rugged without considering human limits--and like this icing of scar, they serve as summary of upheavals in a time we have not seen. Reaching up from her seat on the pavement, his wife offered him a bundle of jute, wrist thick and bound; braided to a twine and finished with a thong; it stood out springingly from his fist.
He spread his hands, drew spasm of breath, and then spread his arms. Each greater breath produced a cry, deeper and more piercing as he worked toward frenzy. By spinning and convulsing around his exhalations, this man bound the passing crowd even as he lost sight of them. With ten whirling gasps, he lost the world and cleared a circle he could not know of with the tip of his jute whip.
On the eleventh cry, he brought his arms to wrap about him; the braided fiber circled twice before laying its thong exactly on the epaulette of healed skin at his left shoulder. Part of the fascination was the niceness of the measure. The snap straightened every slouch in the circle of on-lookers. Half-spinning, he hesitated nothing to snap his arms about him again with hoarsening shouts, each followed by that searing snap. Blood, drawn to the red strip, dripped off his elbow.
Coins, notes and single words rolled about the side-walk at his feet. A drift of folded paper settled his way from the five stories of the front of the hotel. Little did he know or care, but his wife was nimble to glean the area in an unobtrusive manner.
The circle thinned and drifted off. The man began to pick at the red band on his elbow. His blood made to clot unassisted. I was moved to send a slightly larger note drifting from my window. Looking up, he nodded to acknowledge recognition of his accomplishment.
Receiving his assistance to lower her cabinet to the earth, his wife drew the early few assembled watchers to her opening of its doors. A shrine was revealed, lurid with divinity, a peacock’s long feather...and she lit incense. Her husband received an inch-wide strip of red cloth, which he hitched about his left arm so that it trailed the elbow. Rising along the muscle of his upper arm, each eye was naturally drawn to many peaks of cicatrix, where vaccination ought someday to mark the arm of the child his wife carried. The Himalaya have many points, impress the traveler and seem rugged without considering human limits--and like this icing of scar, they serve as summary of upheavals in a time we have not seen. Reaching up from her seat on the pavement, his wife offered him a bundle of jute, wrist thick and bound; braided to a twine and finished with a thong; it stood out springingly from his fist.
He spread his hands, drew spasm of breath, and then spread his arms. Each greater breath produced a cry, deeper and more piercing as he worked toward frenzy. By spinning and convulsing around his exhalations, this man bound the passing crowd even as he lost sight of them. With ten whirling gasps, he lost the world and cleared a circle he could not know of with the tip of his jute whip.
On the eleventh cry, he brought his arms to wrap about him; the braided fiber circled twice before laying its thong exactly on the epaulette of healed skin at his left shoulder. Part of the fascination was the niceness of the measure. The snap straightened every slouch in the circle of on-lookers. Half-spinning, he hesitated nothing to snap his arms about him again with hoarsening shouts, each followed by that searing snap. Blood, drawn to the red strip, dripped off his elbow.
Coins, notes and single words rolled about the side-walk at his feet. A drift of folded paper settled his way from the five stories of the front of the hotel. Little did he know or care, but his wife was nimble to glean the area in an unobtrusive manner.
The circle thinned and drifted off. The man began to pick at the red band on his elbow. His blood made to clot unassisted. I was moved to send a slightly larger note drifting from my window. Looking up, he nodded to acknowledge recognition of his accomplishment.
Hard men live easy, it’s true,
and, yes, easy men live hard. Only man...even women... tries and fails to be humane. |
He helped his wife to lift the tall box to her head, repacked for use another day–not soon. They stepped into the pedestrian flow to seek their stopping place for the night.
Triple-salt your tears–with blood
...and sweat run down from your brow. If this is a tale of love, not Punch and Judy again. a boy walks home free of his kite at last looking down short day I’m a boy clutching my kite on the maidan grass, Wide-eyed as Persians and camels caravan past. |
That just anyone can fly a kite is tribute to the ingenuity of a difficult-to-impoverish people. There is tradition and passion attached to kites.
careening along
clutching his pants and a string –kid with a kite three white grains of rice two twigs and your blue airgram flies again not always so small between buildings and wires boys flying kites |
Fighting kites receive every assistance, but suffer the fate of soldiers, who go to wars until they return no more.
ground glass on the string
it helps but rub your kite with seashell to |
The translucent stripes a clamshell can make on the paper are said to strengthen a kite against tearing.
cut off from its string
a fighting kite falls freely into the Bo tree is a kite always over this neighborhood? nights would be chilly |
Chil, the kite, the great, slender hawk–makes more plentiful a show in large urban districts. It swoops on motionless wings close over the roof-tops. Once I counted twenty over a maidan.
busy air
feathered kites dust paper kites dodging |
It seems a puzzle at first: what urban plenty may be found more there than in the green and growing surround. Man has been so long on earth that there are numerous kinds of small creatures which must be classed primarily as urban dwellers– the pigeon, the rat, the striped ground squirrel, house cats, dogs, kowa–the two-toned crow, among trees, the pipal.
railroad fleas
rub shoulders with bed bugs as if they were kin |
Ever since she left India, my eldest daughter told me of excellencies she left behind. One least enjoyable feature of our long delayed return was the susceptibility we all had developed to native bacteria. Just as Basho was plagued by, "an old complaint," which he was forced to accommodate, so we learned to take with a discerning hand from the land’s bounty.
forbidden fruit
amrood by the road side –untasted heaven |
Karrhar turned out to be jack fruit, without enlightening much of anyone else. But we were interested.
It must have been–the English, straining for new names by cart-loads in this Garden of Eden, newly acquired wholesale, would have sought for resemblances to the fruits of their own land. Lacking anything there, they took similarities to articles of everyday life as namesakes for what they came upon in their new raj. What must have been the ways of old empire? Fruit of the karrhar, with its thumb-thick stem, sprouting directly from the main trunk of the tree and its tough, knurled rugger-ball of a fruit, brought to mind that thug’s recourse, the lead-weighted sap or jack. One finds it familiar from detective literature of a certain period. Much scratching of the head and looking into it in books revealed amrut to be Persephone’s curse –pomegranate. But we never fit the description of one certain fruit with a name.
It must have been–the English, straining for new names by cart-loads in this Garden of Eden, newly acquired wholesale, would have sought for resemblances to the fruits of their own land. Lacking anything there, they took similarities to articles of everyday life as namesakes for what they came upon in their new raj. What must have been the ways of old empire? Fruit of the karrhar, with its thumb-thick stem, sprouting directly from the main trunk of the tree and its tough, knurled rugger-ball of a fruit, brought to mind that thug’s recourse, the lead-weighted sap or jack. One finds it familiar from detective literature of a certain period. Much scratching of the head and looking into it in books revealed amrut to be Persephone’s curse –pomegranate. But we never fit the description of one certain fruit with a name.
so that’s amrood!
Green heaps for pennies guava there is no English |
The fall crop of rice still stood in January, for the most part, in sacks--a maund each, eighty pounds–unhulled, piled head high at the threshing-floor edge and against the walls of farmers’ homes all over the countryside. It was a good harvest, for all that early rains washed out roads and a first planting. In Old Delhi’s bazaar, where cheap meals are sold on plates of splinter-stitched leaves, customers stand in the shadowed lane to eat; it is this new, un-aged rice which is served. It is cheapest in the market, cooking sticky and starchy; but then, new rice is celebration in itself. In the press of foot traffic, all eyes avert.
too polite to see
–woman scraping her plate with finger-tips new rice |
Public custom is a better guarantee of privacy than private defense.
early morning chill
discipline of the eyes in common practice |
Family is a bond of love which can not be annulled. Kin is traced to the last possible degree and acknowledged with unswerving commitment. The gods’ love is untarnishing gold, where mankind must polish its own constantly to prevent blackening. For those who find their heart accepted with their hand, it is warm and buoyant. The possibility of emigration to "foreign" in recent decades has given release to that part of society which found only halving in sharing.
lonely man
whose parents never gave him brothers Brother’s Day –his daughter serves his son rice no uncles no aunts two sisters married to two brothers together for life |
Friendship is a curious thing, for which there is a word, "dost," and another word, "saathi." It is a privilege to be called by the latter. By the time the former term may be used, it is a right.
with a marigold
pointing out the difference between dost and friend |
With no self-consciousness, a poet inspired by friendship could write:
That love I never meet, the one that I can never find:
Live like a tortoise, forever, but under these stars, never. Your lightest assurances were my fantasies, you know: A feather that would have tickled me to death, were it real. What your slender shafts have pierced, my poor heart alone could tell; And will this sting infect the wound, if it is left to stay? My marble heart could yield up bushels of the finest lime, If the black heap within me were coals and not simply grief. What use this cup of kindness, which but calls up lost old time? But, oh, for that physician hand which filled it through the years. A dervish twirling in the sun must suffer like the rest; If not the torch of love, then living burns us in its lamp. Dunkirk nights: lost in water, lost in air and killing light; Could one live by wit alone, I’d die of stupefaction. Whose eyes can take you in, Solitaire, one of unique kind? Could there have been two like you, there would surely then be four. And why do I spare the millstone, to add to my disgrace The irony of funerals, embarrassment of graves? That saintly smile, Sport, like tapping great books with a finger; We might think you knew some secret, but on your breath there’s schnapps. |
Picking between sidewalk sleepers, we made our way to the lighted tour office.
when the beggar stirs
the dog runs off that all night kept him warm |
Before dawn, in the dark, we were strangers in a bus, lumbering from Delhi to view the more ancient seat of empire, Agra, to the east.
leaving
New Delhi by bus but first Old Delhi |
Ghalib was impressed by the modern capitol the British were building at Calcutta. Even while limbs of Moghal empire were being devoured by the lions of Rajastan, that new power had been swelling on its diet of tigers in Bengal.
a tourist bus
growls through the ring-village of Delhi’s edge |
The Grand Trunk Road, which Kim footed ahead of us, was ancient before the first cannon were trucked its dusty length my invading Turkmans, who stayed to found dynasty. The Awakened One must have walked early ox-bows of its course. Rama splashed to succor his Sita through the skies of its puddles. When Ganesh was still a large-nosed man, its bed was deepening in autochthonic clay. Easy, early cynicism of its passability generated the enduring consonance–Delhi dur, Delhi is far, meaning too far, too far for help or hindrance.
**after vultures– tied crossways behind–
the bone man’s bicycle picks mixed rib-racks and hind ends on its way down the road his regular route My silence out-echoes all my living; I stand an untraced name, carved on a thin stone. Any point on any path affords perspective on death, The binding sum, for which we never find all integers. |
On the route to Agra the camel-wain is common, padding silently ahead on pneumatic tires. Or great lumber projects fore and aft of the saddle pack, while a cowrie-choked neck periscopes up between and camel stilts swing below.
Haltered, with a ring in her long nose, necklaced and tasseled, a Rajastani woman and dromedary peered knowingly at each other.
Haltered, with a ring in her long nose, necklaced and tasseled, a Rajastani woman and dromedary peered knowingly at each other.
burlaped bran wain
–an elephant’s worth sways behind skinny camel shanks |
The great tomb supports a community of service industry--from the bus we rode and the guide who shepherded us to the post-card sellers and hawkers of miniature replicas of the crypt itself, correct in every detail. Shah Jahan employed every mason in the northern sub-continent to construct the edifice of his wife’s tomb. When the work was done, our guide recounted, the Emperor had the thumb struck from the right hand of each workman, so that he might never labor at a lesser task. The community of these artisans still may be identified in the neighborhood by their descendants. They continue ready to produce the Taj in white marble of any size, from paper-weight to full scale, if anyone will so employ them. England too, has its monuments to great wealth in castle and manor. Remnant architecture of any era is moving to its successors, as are bones of extinct behemoths.
the Taj
Pharo’s chickens circling in the high arches of the great tombs bees who can reach them there? |
India’s common citizenry has burgeoned, expanding into the role of tourist. The monuments and great works are filled with crowds imbibing their own past. A few foreign visitors are veritably lost in the crowd.
Among these new throngs is a salting of yet a newer class. In his day, Kipling hoped for the continent to be dowry, inherited by children of the British and their indigenous mates. Change was not to come in that way. Poverty and education have made the Indian engineer and physician a cliche abroad. Now the children of these wanderers, Canadian, American, Australian or British-born make return pilgrimage. They travel as women alone or in pairs, safer in this place, where that is unheard of, than in the place from which they freely came. They speak dialects, which even fluent conversationalists of Indian English find opaque. Their tongues are halt in the speech of their mothers; they stumble over the broken ground offered by three to five levels of formality inherent in those languages and the society reflected there. They are young and look with corrosive curiosity, puzzlement and impatience on the land. They are fate.
Among these new throngs is a salting of yet a newer class. In his day, Kipling hoped for the continent to be dowry, inherited by children of the British and their indigenous mates. Change was not to come in that way. Poverty and education have made the Indian engineer and physician a cliche abroad. Now the children of these wanderers, Canadian, American, Australian or British-born make return pilgrimage. They travel as women alone or in pairs, safer in this place, where that is unheard of, than in the place from which they freely came. They speak dialects, which even fluent conversationalists of Indian English find opaque. Their tongues are halt in the speech of their mothers; they stumble over the broken ground offered by three to five levels of formality inherent in those languages and the society reflected there. They are young and look with corrosive curiosity, puzzlement and impatience on the land. They are fate.
You are the spirit women, breaking out of our houses,
Building your paradise now, instead of the Eden we’ll bring. winter petunias snug to the ground satisfied with small flowers |
Gardens in the Moghal style, as it has survived, surround three sides of the monument. The river has the fourth.
The plum and the cherry bring back almost no one in the spring;
What blushing and kissing has hidden there beneath dust’s wing? Ashoka tree compared a thousand years now to young girls like her |
Watching excavation for a monsoon-sized sewer pipe outside our hotel, one might see the method and manner of the great monuments’ construction. The pyramids, the Parthenon and the great cathedrals were brought into being in like manner.
head to head
a basket of earth moves toward the pile |
*Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness Of Poetry, Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 114.
**Read straight across, straight down and zig-zag, starting at the top, either right or left.