These nights they’re here; those nights they’ve gone. These days they are here; those days they’ve gone. They are a-coming-coming and a-going.
And too,
that old woman who sells greens and herbs for a living that ripe old fisherwoman-her name’s Singaramma
and at the place where Channa-Kusuma met, she sits not without rising
and all that Singaramma once saw, her eyes are still seeing, and that where they tore Channa’s breath from his body and that the door that opened that night
and those nervy hands hanging over her knee and that body of nerves, broken and nervous
now is that a sigh? or is it Singaramma
-sorrowing?
And what does she see on Mother Earth? A drop of blood like a dot of vermilion that adorns a pretty girl’s forehead ….
and from the tuck in her waist she takes the box of lime paste-ah!
and onto her left thumb she presses that lime paste-ah! and then and there that blood-red spot-it fades!
And before now and before long-there again!Before her all seeing eyes!
and now they have brought her to an unknown city, oh! and now and here that bloody spot, oh!
and now they’ve brought her to the City of Gods and now,
and here.