Cautionary tales: After Kabir

I.Beware, my sons, of towns founded by gold-miners,now abandoned in the saddle of a valley.Before long, parting ways with your muleteers,you´ll stumble on routesno caravan has used for decades..Stone monkeys point north to the foothills.Below spread pastures flecked with ash, outpostssnuffed out by crossed signals, crooked guides.Those who reach this town have takenthe wrong direction, been taken for a ride..And come here without risking their neckson the slopes, without seeing that other countryof high passes which do not clear,where the mist hovers, a wry hawk.Who talks of that other country.misses the point.II.Beware, my daughters, of men who say:I´ve forgotten the name of my village,I´ve forgotten the way back;tomorrow, cross the riverin an iron canoe .with rocks for ballast..Starving pioneers, prospectors dupedby brindled stream and hacksaw ledge,may the swooping hawkwish them well..III..A splinter from the fair tree of that other countryonce lodged deep in my thigh. I´ve carriedthat broken spear-point around for years.Fetch me, from the mines of that other country,a lodestone to pull it out..Fronds of fire above, roots winchedin the running transparence of a brook:homage to that phoenix, the fair tree of that other country,on which the image is about to flower..IV..Broken staircase. Blue lotus afloaton the surface of imagined water.My words are pinpoints,spots of light shot though the wormholesin the pages of my grandfather´s journals.My words are foxes gone to groundin the maze of his cellared notes..The man who wrote those testamentsdidn´t notice when his pen fell back,slow-paced turtle to the hare of his song.His speech, like mine, was eastern:if you were quicker, you´d catch his wordsbefore they melted on my tongueand trapped us in writing once again..Hunt on, coroner of rhymes, among library shelvesin the west, where no one follows usexcept the anthologists of curious dialects.