from Coming and Going Among the Old Mountain
“…the two issued from the same mold, differing in name…”
—Daodejing
[…]
at a loss, in a loss, along the banks of Loss—
one foot in front of the other
all the way down long rocks
together named Blue Ridge
the pitying waters of Roanoke—
I take off my shoes and socks
and rub my heels together—
on a pebble in the water
light and lichen play draughts—
[…]
doors deep now
in everything—
now a calf lows
inside doors—
o fawn, tell me
what’s “inside,” what’s “outside,”
when planetrees, sycamores,
sweetgums, locusts, grasses
candied in rich ticks all,
all, all indoors, and me flung
out like their asthmatic little shadow—
calf in my pocket, plump as a muscle
o but how he choked
his liver and rubbed
and rubbed his yellow
plumdeep ankles
heavier than even a river
I can’t understand, can’t
put one foot in front of—
[…]
Talk to me. I approach you.
I approach you—you don’t come closer—
I leave you yet hear you afore me—
Calf, I think you’re
what’s always been—
Mum bell beneath the old mountain
his hands have moved, his hands
are full, have done. His hands
are full. His hands are gone.
The loof of his hands are gone.
[…]
The river splits
the land in two:
Elsewhere on the left.
Where-Else on the right.
June now Elsewhere.
Thursday in Where-Else.
Though I’m told,
though I’m shown,
through the words,
numbers, brocades
of logics, shown
through all the particulars
bright as pigeons:
It’s Thursday,
It’s July.
That it will be Thursday again.
And again, and again,
in the Triple-Watered City
nested among the Alleghenies—
that I am Me again, again.
Again that I have never been otherwise.
But deep in my (I admit it) thieved Elsewhere,
still by you, Roanoke,
little thread,
oh I don’t believe it.
I don’t believe and I don’t know what it is that I don’t believe.
That fact, of not believing, is an opaque pane:
I can’t see through it, but I see it.
[…]
by the bed the nurse
held a bowl to the man’s mouth
outside it was beginning to rain
one drop in front of the other
the man’s mouth said “baba wawa”
among brimming milk
outside light was whistling, walking deeply
putting days in things
at the sink the nurse held
a bowl to water
outside Salem’s outskirts
raspberry among blue mountain thickets
[…]
one foot in front of the other
an old woman walked
across the mountain—
“I’ve lost my cow,”
she said, “brown,
white spots, kind eyes,
have you seen her?”
“No,” I said. “My father
has died,” I said,
though it had been months.
“I’m sorry to hear that,”
she said. We looked
through the field together.
At the field’s end,
as though remembering
the forgotten stove, land
ran back down to a doorless
barn by the sobby
river.
She put her hollowed
hands mouthside
and rung out:
Bamboo! Bam-boo!
Bam-bam! Bamboo?
Bam-boo! Bamboo!
Where’s my Bamboo!
“Well, hopefully
she turns up soon,
she knows where
we live. You local?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ve lived here
a while,” she said,
“my husband is vice-
provost. “Of what,”
I said, “and what’s
a vice-provost?”
“You know…I don’t
actually know,” she said.
We said goodbye
back at the car.
There was a film
of silver on high
mountains. Light
in the fields seeped
onto the flakeful road
with radiant
veins I drove slowly
down the flying
mountain, stopping,
starting, stopping,
looking for Bamboo,
until I wasn’t—
[…]
[ The Roanoke in Time ]
Think of water on glass: there water sheds its opacity and suffuses the pane.
(1) There never was any water—only the glass in all its clarity.
a. Corollary: The more fanatic the clarity, the less you see glass,
the more you see only water. There was only water.
(2) There never was any glass—only the water in all its opacity.
a. Corollary: The more fanatic the opacity, the less you see water,
the more you see only glass. There was only glass.
—for Kokyo Henkel
[…]
splitting the lands
the river was going
along clad in all
its sards minnows
cubs bagworms
nothing more
nothing less
than minnows
moths bears
bright lattices
gleaming
stretching
going along
was now
was gone.
In the wake
bells, plods,
lows of cattle,
muds, trout, roan,
seamless Where-Else—
[…]
∩
Varun Ravindran lives in Pittsburgh. His debut poetry collection, Betweenness, was released by Baobab Press in 2025.