From “Walt Whitman’s Inscriptions”

Lauren Shufran (bio)
UC Santa Cruz

Recording 1“To Thee Old Cause.”

“To Thee Old Cause”

Walt Whitman is on Tinder in India. He can't
Stop swiping right; everyone is divine. His lone
Grievance is with the screen, the absence
Of bodies, of embodiments. The body is where Walt's poems
Begin, after all; like when he claims, in "Song of Myself,"
That beggars "embody themselves in me and I
Am embodied in them"; and because of that reciprocity,
Suddenly Walt can write a poem
About what it's like to hunger. Walt's trouble with Tinder
Is the avatar, is that he can't sympathize
With an image. Turning formlessness
Into form, Walt announces, is the first step
To increasing intimacy.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna demonstrates
This affinity between form and intimacy
When he assumes the shape of a man and meets Arjuna
On a battlefield, where they dialogue like two men
On the verge of warFor whom war is not the nearest priority,
About duty, illusion, and reality. This is what the word avatar
Initially meant: the descent of a deity
Into terrestrial form. Everyone is divine
Walt's repeating like a mantra as he sweeps his thumb repeatedly
Across the screen–a modern mudra of omni-reverence;
But in the Gita, Arjuna actually gets to witness
Krishna's theophany–beginningless, boundless,
Performing unending miracles with numberless parts
And infinite expressions
On infinite faces–and is obliged to apologize
For ever treating the god,
In his finite human form, too casually. Oops,
Says Arjuna; I carelessly lunched and lounged in beds with you.
Except really Arjuna says nothing;
Because when Krishna exhibits the infinite,
Arjuna is mute with awe.
Awe is not
Intimacy. The avatar occasions–embodiment occasions–
Both intimacy and a kind of heedlessness. Krishna
Is forgetful even of his own godhead
To facilitate this intimacy, to dialogu
eAbout devotion, which is what men examine
At the threshold of war. He returns
To the body when he discerns Arjuna's fear, Arjuna's art
And Arjuna's artlessness
When coming into contact with the Absolute.

My lover is afraid of the similarities
Between our bodies. Does this make her more
Or less my lover. It is dawn in India;
We are in bed and Walt is in the room
Next door; I do pranayama
While my lover sleeps. It is a filling and emptying
Of form; it is control
As a kind of intimacy, intimacy as a byproduct
Of control as practice. I think
This discipline of the breath, this witnessing
The rise and fall of my own chest is my temporary joy.
The Bhagavad-Gita says it is my temporary problem;
That form is but one expression
Of a myriad of possibilities and thus a limitation;
That attachment is a byproduct of embodiment,
Which is form.
It is easy to ignore
One's attachments to one's lover
When it is dawn, and there is togetherness
And synchronous breath.
I think, if I were more like Walt,
I would also be able to celebrate my lover's lovers.
That I would respond with more grace
When the razor in her shower has a fresh blade on it,
When she steps out
On an evening
In lipstick one shade darker
Than the shade she usually wears.
Lovers no longer fail–if they ever did–
Because of the animosity
Of gods or fathers; though they've always failed
Because of form
And its attendant attachments. Because one time
Your lover will lose a friend
And will need to grieve alone;
And you won't justly be able to gauge her grief
Against your sadness
That you are not the object of her consolation.
Because sometimes you tell your lover
About rush hour traffic on the 280, emphasizing
How you must endure it each time you come to her,
And while neither of you would call it this,
Each of you senses some small manipulation
In what fronts as a grievance about movement.
Because sometimes
You are on a battlefield
Because it is your dharma to fight a war, and your lover
Appears before you, at the forefront
Of the enemy lines
With images of all your epic failures on her shield.
All of these are problems
Of embodiment. And yet love
Demands difference. And yet difference
Is one thing embodiment makes.

Walt's got precisely 500 characters
In which to write his Tinder tagline. He starts typing in
His poem called "To Thee Old Cause"
Because Walt wants Tinder users to know he's passionate;
But he can only fit
The first twelve lines in. What you read
Before you swipe right on Walt–
Because you are in India, trying to find yourself,
And you think Walt might have your answer–
Is some lavish adulation for a "good" and "peerless" cause,
A "deathless" and "sweet idea" for which, Walt claims,
Every war in every age has been fought.
The trouble is, Walt's poem
Fails to specify
Precisely what this cause is; and all the critics are right-swiping
To inquire. Read the scholarship
On this poem; there's no consensus
On what Walt means by "cause." Consider that later in the poem–
The part that won't fit
Into Walt's Tinder profile–Walt claims
That "my book and the war are one": a claim
That might strike you as odd,
Since the first three editions of Leaves of Grass
Were written before the Civil War had even begun. Consider
How, retrospectively, Walt saw no difference
Between his book and the War,
The cause of which he won't name.
That the cause of the War–which is the cause
Of all wars–is also the cause
Of Walt's book. And because Walt doesn't indicate
The cause of all wars in his book which is also a war,
The cause of Walt's book
Remains indeterminate.

The cause of the Kurukshetra War
In the Bhagavad-Gita is a matter
Of dynastic succession. That's
The easy answer, anyhow. The more complex answer
Derives from the fact that the Kurukshetra War has no
Historical basis; it is a fiction upon which
A man's dialogue with the divine is built;
It is a fiction to show
How devotion resolves
The fiction. The cause
Of the Kurukshetra War, that is, is devotion
To Krishna, is love
Of Krishna. The cause
Of the fiction of the war
Is the wish to cause
The audience of the fiction
To love the divine figure
At its center. Which is another way of saying
That love
Is the cause of Kurukshetra War
In the Bhagavad-Gita.

My lover
Is at the center of the bed, where she's moved
To place her hand heavy on my chest,
A way of proposing my pranayama practice
At dawn
Be less vigorous. If I were Walt, I would write:
"My lover embodies herself in me and I
Am embodied in her"; and because of that reciprocity,
I could suddenly write a poem
About what it's like
To be my own lover
And to suffer sleeplessness because of it.
The trouble with the avatar
Is it affords the illusion of sympathy.
The beauty of the avatar
Is it affords the illusion of sympathy. Oops,
I say; I took for granted we were breathing together.
Except really I say nothing,
Because touch is the next best thing to theophany,
Because this touch appeals to silence,
And so I am mute with some combination
Of awe and petition.
My lover has been in two cars, in one lifetime,
That have rolled over on the road.There's no device
That puts the body back together
At the end of the war, or of the book,
Or of the experience.
All of these
Are problems of form, but one of them
Is a reason Arjuna did not want to fight the battle
At Kurukshetra.

I cannot write the poem containing the forms
My lover's desire takes. I can only
Take up her razor in the shower
And employ it to its purpose, which entails
Tracing the surface
Of this–my–particular form,
Again and again, without grasping.
My lover and I share some suspicion
Of embodiment; does this make us more
Or less
Embodied. When Walt knocks on our door after dawn
It is too late for an aubade; he wants to know
If it is possible to search for someone specific
On Tinder. He's looking for Krishna, the boy
He met on the beach last night; he's looking
For a practical application
Of epics. Walt is afraid
Of separation. He wants a thread
Of teleological unfolding;
He wants a single cause to turn a book upon;
He wants that cause to be eternal; he wants it
To be war which is also maybe love; he wants
To borrow my lover's razor for just ten minutes
Because his is somewhere on Mandrem Beach
In the hands of a boy who is pacing the water, who is breaking
Walt's heart with his beauty.
When I hand the razor to Walt
I don't tell him how laden its blade is
With fictions.
Poems no longer fail because of the animosity of gods
Or fathers. They fail because of form;
Because I cannot say "my book and my love are one"
And write my love, my book, into a state of unfailing.
Everyone is divine, claims Walt, who is now beginning to feel
Repetitive stress injuries
In his pointer finger. Awe is not intimacy,
Claims the first stanza of this translation
Of Walt Whitman's "To Thee Old Cause"–
But if awe occasions reverence, and reverence
Devotion, and devotion occasions dialogue
Before gods and before wars, then maybe this poem,
After all, gives Walt and me permission
To experience both in synchronicity,
Even in the fictions we make
Of ourselves and our lovers–
Like there was ever a boy on the beach named Krishna
Whom Walt gave more to
Than he made a poem from.

“For Him I Sing”

Recording 2 “For Him I Sing.”

Walt pays two hundred rupees for a foot rub
On the beach in Goa. He's undeterred by accusatory
Trip Advisor reviews–
Metatarsals fractured by prepubescent masseuses,
Hundreds of holidays
Whose temple visits were tainted
By debilitating ankle bruises. Walt's undaunted 'cause
He knows
How to genuflect
In contempt of an injury.
He's knelt to test the steel nib of his fountain pen for sharpness;
He's knelt at makeshift altars, rubbed
His hands upon the brows of dying boys on beds
At wards where he has knelt while
Planting flags as thick as trees in potted plants on windowsills
While fashioning the line:
"I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America," which Walt will later use in his poem called
"For You O Democracy"
Which is not the poem this poem is a translation of.
He has knelt between the wheels of Arjuna's chariot
And Arjuna's adversaries who are also Arjuna's teachers,
Glaring in the direct face of Drona
Who taught Walt how to kneel into the bow
While stringing it; and indeed Walt kneels into the bow each time
He strings it–
Though he will not kneel beside Colin Kaepernick
As the National Anthem plays, because that
Offends American patriotism
Like it briefly offends Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
"Notorious RBG,"
Who tells Katie Couric that she wouldn't arrest Colin for kneeling,
She'd just opine on Yahoo! News about
The facets of its disrespect. But if Ginsburg won't, then Walt
Will take you through
The logic of that kneeling's illegality,
Which Walt now rehearses to the boy whose hands
Are clamped around Walt's arches. It's a matter
Of synonyms, which is a synonym
For forced equivalence. It goes:
"A directive
Is almost a code, and a code
Is roughly a statute, and a statute
Is nearly a law; thus Kaepernick
Is taking the law into his own hands, that is,
The law in his own knees, thus
Breaking both in bowing, thus
A law unto himself–which only
The law's allowed to be." Walt can logic like this
Because he's writing a poem called "For Him I Sing,"
In which Walt claims he is going to make the man for whom
He sings–and who remains unidentified
For all five lines of the poem–
A law unto himself
By singing him into expansion
And then "fus[ing] the immortal laws" to him.

If Walt's poem as I have summarized it creeps you out at all,
I'd say that's a legitimate response. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Is a little disturbed: what's precedent
To an immortal law? What's a law
Immune to overrule? But the Bhagavad-Gita has the answer
To those questions; and Walt's poem
"For Him I Sing" may be the first reference Leaves of Grass makes
To Sanatana dharma, the absolute set of duties
Incumbent upon all Hindus. These "immortal laws"
Include things like ahimsa (non-violence) and satya (truthfulness),
But they don't include standing for the anthem,
Which I'm not even sure there is a Sanskrit word for.
Patriotism is, after all, a form of attachment.
But so is the act of writing Trip Advisor reviews,
Walt thinks; and he knowsThose reviewers
Of ostensibly distressing massages didn't
Perceive the "whole"–by which Walt means, the body
Historical. As a poet, Walt knows a little something
About autopoiesis–
And not only because each poem Walt writes
Generates the very laws by which
The next poem he writes is written; not only because
Each poem of Walt's
Participates in engendering
The very nation that his next poem is nourished
By the soil of. As a poet,
Walt also knows more about the human body
Than all the non-poets getting massaged, right now,
In Goa. This is because every poem
Is like a nervous system:
A self-referentially enclosed recursive network of signals
That self-creates and self-perpetuates
With every sensory experience, adapting itself–
Through a history of perturbations–
Toward broader interactions within the sphere
Of self-consciousness. That's what a poem does:
Self-creates and self-perpetuate
sThrough a history of perturbations. This occurs over a course
Of centuries, of millennia; but Walt is a poet; he thinks
Expansively. Prick him with a pin–one time, a thousand
Times a day–and Walt will respond by audibly celebrating
How this pricking is sharpening the nervous systems
Of his poetic progeny.
So on the beach, Walt's all:
Whatever about a swollen ankle; whatever if no one notes
For years my Hindu gravitations. He orders another
Banana lassi; he takes a sweeping gaze
Of the Arabian Sea which is also
The Indian Ocean; his gaze sweeps until it lands
Back on the boy
Going hard in at Walt's feet.

"If they can insist that he respect a yellow flag,
They can insist that he respect
The American flag," says the boy,
Who has been seduced by Walt's logic
About the criminality of Colin Kaepernick.
That's because, while we never discover who Walt sings for
In his poem called "For Him I Sing," we do find out
That the boy massaging Walt's feet is Bryan Fischer
Of the American Family Association, who holds
Such conservatively hateful views that even the AFA
Has repudiated
Much of what he's said. While this poem
Which is making a problem of Walt's patriotism
While reflecting on the possible Hindu influences
Of his poems
Hardly thinks itself precious,
It won't provoke you with the specifics
Of Fischer's beliefs: they're out there
For the finding. On the beach in Goa
Even the cheerleaders are kneeling
For the pre-game anthem, teens and tweens
Whose photos get posted on websites
Tracking the "Kaepernick Effect," the honors band
Whose business is to play the National Anthem
Kneeling behind their cellos as they play
The very song for which they kneel in a defiance
That can only be perplexingly partial.
Colin Kaepernick
Is running the beach
Wearing socks depicting cartoon pigs in police caps.
This ignites a second controversy, as though
The kneeling and the socks weren't
One and the same protest. But when the meta-commentary
Is already present on Colin Kaepernick's ankles,
There is no room to write a narrative
About Colin Kaepernick's kneeling, which is a narrative
About Colin Kaepernick's Patriotism.

There is no meta-commentary
In Walt's poem "For Him I Sing,"
So I don't expect you to know that the song
Walt sings in this poem
Which you thought was also maybe
The very song he claims to be singing
In his poem called "For Him I Sing,"
Is, in fact, the National Anthem. I only know this
Because I was in India with Walt Whitman
The day the two-hundred-and-third black person
To be fatally shot by police in 2016
Was killed; and on the following day,
When RBG–who has been called "a law unto herself,"
And in many ways this is not
Figurative–notoriously called
Colin Kaepernick "arrogant,"
I was still in India with Walt Whitman. We were in
Meditation
During the two-hundred-and-third
Shooting, and again during the opining
Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; I was being asked
To dilate my third eye chakra by tapping it
Steadily with the pointer finger of my right hand;
I was being told
This dilation would make me susceptible to the spirit
In sleep and in waking;
I was then susceptible to the spirit
Of interpretation; I was asking Walt:
Why use the word "dilate"
In your poem "For Him I Sing"; is there not something
Intrinsically vulgar in the desire
To dilate a man; you can't ever make a man wide enough
To encompass all laws; even Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Has no such girth. You'll notice how quickly my query
Turns into objection; sometimes pranayama
Riles me. Walt's third eye is now a sight
Unto itself; his vision making more vision; it's
Autopoeitic but okay it's also Biblical; Bryan Fischer
Is gripping Walt's big toe mounds
Where Walt presses into the yoga mat
Every morning
In samasthiti,
Not only because Walt is a yogi but because
He is a poet; and he loves the zeugmatic impact
Of the phrase: "ground your big toe mounds
Along with your ego." Bryan Fisher quotes
The Book of Matthew: "For whoever has,
To him
More shall be given." It's autopoietic possession, if you ignore
The part about grace. It's autopoietic–law–
Whether or not you ignore it:
A self-referentially enclosed network
Of enforcers of law who are also
Laws unto themselves,
Extra-legal bodies that the law ingests and transforms
Into legal forms
That self-create and self-perpetuate,
Reproduce and validate the very law that's made them legal.

The sound Walt hears in the background
As his toes begin to crack
Is not the Adriatic Sea
Of the Indian Ocean; it's the gentle hum
Of the legal system reproducing itself.
The sound you hear in the background
As you read this poem
Is not the gentle hum of the legal system's
Autopoietic being; it's the gentle hum
Of Walt Whitman, who will hum
His poem "For Him I Sing" until Colin Kaepernick
Gets off his knees and puts less offensive
Socks on. Here is Walt's description
Of what he feels like
When he hears "Notorious RBG" express regret
For her statements about Colin:

My limbs sink,
my mouth is parched,
my body trembles,
the hair bristles on my flesh.

The magic bow slips
from my hand, my skin burns,
I cannot stand still,
my mind reels.

Except that's not Walt; that's Arjuna–
As translated by Barbara Stoler Miller–standing
Before his kinsmen
On the field at Kurukshetra. "Krishna,"
Arjuna says, "I see my kinsmen
Gathered here, wanting war"; Krishna, "I see no good
In killing my kinsmen." The first chapter
Of the Bhagavad-Gita generally gets translated
As "The Depression of Arjuna" or
"The Dejection of Arjuna" or
"The Despondency of Arjuna": vishada yoga, the yoga
Of despair. What's Arjuna so stressed about? you ask.
What is the object of Arjuna's fear? Walt asks,
Because Walt knows I am writing poems about him,
And so he poses his questions more formally than you do
These days. Arjuna's got Krishna–
Who is otherwise a god–subordinated by love and driving
His chariot; he's got KrishnaMassaging his feet on the beach
At Kurukshetra; like Walt, Arjuna
Is taking the pain in stride; he knows
How to genuflect
In contempt of an imminent injury; he has just blown
His conch shell and the sound has torn
The hearts of Walt Whitman
And Arjuna's every opponent. It has torn
Their hearts because each time Arjuna blows
His conch shell, Hanuman also roars; and the sound
Of Hanuman's roaring alone is the thunder
Of every stadium riot; and the sound alone
Is terrifying if you are not already
On Hanuman's side. And Arjuna has the flag
Of Lord Hanuman in his hand, with the emblem
Of Hanuman upon it… and still, Arjuna cannot bring himself
To sing the National Anthem.

Patriotism is, after all, a form of attachment.
Krishna–who is, after all, both a god and a black boy–
Is not a little teasing Arjuna
When he drives him between the two armies
As Arjuna commands his Lord who is also his driver, and says:
"See, it is only your family–on both sides–
Who are assembled." Arjuna is not a little
Dropping the bow in a justifiable war
When he slumps in his chariot like Colin Kaepernick,
Whose knee is down like a poem with a nervous system
Which reads like a nation
That continues to be formally shaped
Through a history of perturbations.

Among the list
Of Arjuna's symptoms as described
In the chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita
Called vishada yoga–and as described
By Walt Whitman of his own response to Ruth
Bader Ginsburg's regret–is romaharsha.
Romaharsha often gets translated as "hair standing
On end"; but it is actually a bristling
Of the hair that is caused by delight. The men
Standing before Arjuna on the field
At Kurukshetra are the very men who define him; thus
To kill them is to kill himself. The men kneeling
Before Walt Whitman on the football field in Goa–
Who are Bryan Fischer and Colin Kaepernick
And Krishna and myself–are the very men
Who cause this poem to ask about the difference
Between taking the law into your own hands
And having the law in your own heart
And being a law unto yourself. RomaharshaIs one symptom of realizing
You are subordinated by law; romaharsha
Is one symptom of realizing
You are subject to none. Walt writes a poem called
"This Poem is a Law unto Itself";
It is about the Baltimore police and the Ferguson
Police and the Oakland and Cleveland
Police and the SFPD and the LAPD and the NCPD;
And it is a poem that dilates to encompass all the PDs
But it is also a poem about
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and about Walt's poem
Called "For Him I Sing" and it is about
Romans 2 where Paul calls the Gentiles "a law
Unto themselves" because who needs
A stone tablet when someone already inscribed the law
On the tenderest spot in your heart. Bryan Fischer
Is particularly fondOf this last reading until he trades out
His King James Version for an English
Standard Version of the Bible,
Where he reads "God shows no partiality"
Instead of "God is no respecter of persons,"
The latter of which Bryan Fischer preferred
Not only because he is a foot masseuse in India
And a Christian in Oklahoma, but also because
He is a poet; and he loves the assonant impact
Of the phrase: "respecter of persons"
Because it lets him privilege
The sound of the phrase to its content.

To include more assonance
In his poem called "For Him I Sing," Walt writes,
Or I write:
"An existence of self-sustaining autopoiesis is such
That vision occasions more vision and practice
Occasions more practice." There's
A tautology there; but to dispense with it
Would unsettle the pleasure Bryan Fischer
Gets out of sameness of sound,
The pleasure he gets
From resemblance. Walt takes his pointer finger
From his third eyeSo he can put his right hand over his heart
While the anthem plays; his logic
Is that "should" is an obligation, not a suggestion–
As though every imperative
Were an indicative, as though the "immortal laws,
"The dharmyamrtam–all thirty-six qualities
Of a true devotee listed in the Bhagavad-Gita–
Could be reduced to the temporal laws,
Or statutes,
Or codes,
Or directives
Of a nation. That shift from dilation
To constriction in the third eyes, and in the first
And in the second eyes of this poem's men, its poet
And Walt's translator
Is the screech you hear in the background
As you read this.

“To The States”

Recording 3: “To The States.”

There are also the things I have failed to include in the poem
Until now: the vultures circling straight overhead
At the retreat center, the scarcity of rain
Before the exorbitance of rain, then the snakes
Strewn deranged across the roads after the surplus. How the waves
Afterward come so hard that even the plovers,
Who have evolved to elude the whitewash,
Get swept up in them. All the knocks
On all the doors I wasn't prepared for, the lists of reasons
The lovers I meet give for why they no longer sleep
In the same bed together. Plus other things that are not mine
That I weep for nonetheless,
Like licking the outside of a bottle of honey,
Which is also a metaphor for watching kirtan
Without participating: no taste.

At the Ayurvedic center in Kerala, Walt Whitman
Is getting a four-handed massage. The point
Is to lengthen Walt's trapezius so his shoulder is less vexed
In adho mukha savasana. The point
Is Walt's experience of synchronicity. The masseurs
Tell Walt: "We want you to remember your reptilian origins.
"They are referring to the facility of Walt Whitman's spine;
But all Walt's contemplating are the parts of him
That he perceives as untouchable: the cellulite on the backs
Of Walt's thighs, the tops of his feet where the sand flies
On the beach have assaulted him. Walt's stomach
Which could be tighter at the abdomen,
But isn't. The dosha test Walt Whitman and I took online
Before traveling to India identified Walt
As Pitta. The Ayurvedic center confirms
Our diagnosis, reducesWalt's intake of spices to balance him. Signs
Of a Pitta imbalance include anger and irritability,
Frustration and fitful sleep, willfulness, bad breath,
Penchants for platitudes in italics, bloodshot eyes.
All of these symptoms are unmistakably present
In Walt Whitman's poem "To The States,"
Which, in earlier editions of Leaves of Grass,
Was called "Walt Whitman's Caution" and included
In a sub-sequence of Leaves called "Songs of Insurrection.
"In the poem, Walt addresses the States United and then
The states individual, challenging it and them
To "Resist much, obey little." Those are Walt's italics,
Not mine. The syllogistic force
Of the poemIs that unquestioning obedience
On the part of a state leads to enslavement;
And a state once enslaved"
[N]ever afterward resumes its liberty." That's Walt's
Platitude, not mine; but the excess
Of Pitta is our common condition, and the downward spiral
Of Walt Whitman's caution belongs–
The poem assures me–to both of us.

It's a fiery miniature of a lyric, full of agni.
Give the poem some oatmeal, a cucumber,
An avocado, the Ayurvedic doctors would say.
Give it a moment, the historians would say,
Because they recognize the paradigm it warns of.
Give it a rest, our autocrat-elect
Would insist
Though he would only insist it
Over Twitter; Give it a break, Walt Whitman's boss
At the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, at the Department
Of the Interior; Give it a handle
And make it a sign, the protesters everywhere
While the crime of protest holds its breath
At the threshold of further criminalization. Give it
To me, Richard Spencer would say,
Before making contact with the microphone
In the Ronald Regan Building, Washington, D.C.,
To conclude the speech my poem
About Walt Whitman's poem "To The States" has been deferring
With: "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!"

With his face in the cradle and an ocean
Between himself and Richard Spencer,
Walt Whitman hears "hail" and not "heil."
But since Spencer's "hail victory!"
Is a straightforward translation
Of Hitler's "sieg hiel!"
And since Spencer has advocated
For a thoroughly white America
Through "peaceful ethnic cleansing"
And since the audients' response
To Spencer's closing words
Is to raise flat hands in a Nazi salute,
The pronunciation - "hail" or "heil" -
Is no matter. Walt Whitman is grinding his teeth
On the sheets of the massage table,
His drool trailing through the headrest
And pooling on the floor. What
Is this here? This here? the masseur
Keeps asking, as though Walt could justify
Each of his trapezial adhesions
Through description.
The German word "heil" signifies more
Than salutation. It carries connotations of healing
And health, as in: good health to you, dictator;
Take care of yourself, noble subject
As in: here's to your welfare,
Walt Whitman.
By 1937 in Germany, it was illegal
For Jews to use the phrase with each other.
Juridically speaking, that is, only Aryans
Could wish each other well.

The Bhagavad-Gita is one of the most ancient textual sources
Of the word ārya. The word occurs in the second chapter,
Which is called "Sankhya Yoga,"
And which is the reason Walt Whitman and I
Are at the Ayurvedic center: to prepare ourselves
For asana, which is to prepare us
For meditation. When Krishna first speaks to Arjuna
In the second chapter of the Gita,
Arjuna is still slumped in his chariot which remains parked
Between the armies. Still
Arjuna is frozen with pity for his frenemies
Who are his fathers and teachers and lovers
On the other side of civil war; but his pity has nothing
In commonWith divine compassion. That's why Krishna says:
How un-Aryan of you, Arjuna; how cowardly
And unbecoming, this pity. The word
Krishna uses
Is anārya. In Sanskrit, the word ārya
Means "noble" or "advanced";
Anārya means: "those who do not know
The value of life." That's one translation, anyhow. What Krishna
Spends the rest of the second chapter
Asking Arjuna to remember is the difference in value
Between body and soul, material nature
And spirit, prakriti
And purusha. This is the frank dualism
Of Sankhya yoga. "When you go low,
I go high," Krishna says to Arjuna,
Because he thinks Michelle nailed it
At the DNC, not to mention her sentiment
Is wholly apropos the Gita's message.
"Nothing of nonbeing comes to be,
Nor does being cease to exist," writes Barbara
Stoller Miller, who's translating Krishna.
"So we better get used to each other"
Says Swami Tripurari; and the Ronald Regan Building
In Washington, D.C.
Where his podcast on the Gita is being recorded
Erupts in laughter. How unbecoming,
Cringes Walt Whitman, as four hands bump over
The excess flesh above his serratus posterior.
There is no unbecoming, says Krishna;
Only manifestation, then non-manifestation,
Then manifestation again.

Heinrich Himmler, the Aryan,
Had these lines from the Gita memorized. Heinrich Himmler
Carried the Bhagavad-Gita in his back pocket
As he engineered the murders
Of millions of Jews, Slavs, Romanis, queers,
Persons of color, leftists, socialists, anarchists,
Communists, the disabled. Himmler studied
The Bhagavad-Gita at bedtime,
Marking comparisons between Hitler and Krishna,
Himself and Arjuna,
While he fantasized the many deaths
Of Walt Whitman. The SS called the Gita
A high Aryan canto. "You must remember
Your reptilian origins," say Walt's masseurs,
Says Heinrich Himmler
As he presses his index fingers
Directly into Walt Whitman's spine.
Except the word Himmler uses
Is untermensch: sub-human.
What is this here? This here? Himmler keeps
Interrogating Walt, now punching the parts
That the poet perceives as untouchable.
In Kerala, where the call to prayer
From the nearby mosque wafts
Above the town's Hindu temples, where in the open shala,
Our yoga teacher plays something
That sounds like electronic church music, the vultures
Drop lower in their spiraling
As if to signalize the strain of coexistence.
One thing about a vulture is its spine extends all the way up
To its tongue. Which means that when a vulture pulls
The meat from the bone, it is not the beak
Or the tongue,
But the spine
That is doing the work of separation.

If Arjuna
Were to write a poem called "To The States"
From the early chapters of the Bhagavad-Gita,
The "states" he addressed would not be nation-states
Or constituent states or federated states. They would be states
Of feeling. In an early draft, the poem
Would be called "Arjuna's Caution," because Arjuna thinks
Walt nailed it in 1860. It would arise
From Arjuna's state of fear, which has to do,
In part, with the mixing of castes. Here
Is why I cannot fight, Arjuna says to Krishna:
Civil war corrupts a family; and when a family
Is in disorder, its laws collapse; and when
Its laws collapse, its women
Are debauched; and debauchery causes
A confusion of caste; and a confusion of caste
Is the road to hell that is paved
With impure cementing.

How un-Aryan of you, how unbecoming,
Krishna answers. But his Aryanism is precisely
What Arjuna is worried about: I will unbecome us
If I fight. Both figures appeal to dharma; and this
Is where the tension lies: Krishna says,
You are of the kshatriya, the warrior, class;
It is your dharma to fight; Arjuna says,
I am of the kshatriya, the warrior, class
;It is my dharma to keep the caste system intact,
Which means it is my dharma not to fight.
But Arjuna is in a state of studentship, like Walt Whitman,
On the massage table,
Is in a state of bliss. Like all the snakes
On the road after the rain, the vultures even, their reptilian
Origins, their tongue-spines. The ideas I have
About Walt Whitman's body
That give me permission
To take an online dosha test for him. Walt looks down
At the puddle of drool beneath his face.
One thing about vultures is they vomit defensively.
One thing about licking the outside
Of a bottle of honey
Is that it is a metaphor for witnessing subjection
Without participating in its containment: no taste.

"Also above India
Hovers the sun-sign of the Swastika": that was one
Nazi slogan. Also above Washington D.C.,
Above the States, hovers the sun-sign
Of the Swastika. Who in the SS could prove
That his ancestry went back
To Arjuna? It was Arjuna's warrior class,
That so fascinated Heinrich Himmler. If you read
Himmler's 1943 Posen Speeches
Alongside the Bhagavad-Gita, you'd be struck nauseous
By their ideological similarities:
How if the destiny of a nation calls for it,
Each man has a duty to conduct drastic measures
Without pity
Or regard to kinship, to friendship.
How the deeds we do in prakriti inflict
No damage on purusha; how the higher self is not polluted
In the lower self's murderous acts, so long
As those acts are consonant with dharma. And who
Determines consonance? But this is no place
For sentiment, says Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita.
This is no place
For emotionalism, says Heinrich Himmler.

It is not for Walt or I to surmise
About the justice of using the Gita
As an ideological blueprint.
We are anyhow too busy dripping with abhyanga oil,
Cutting the spices, one by one,
Out of our meals. We are busy
With the blood bubbling forth from our dinners,
Which Arjuna never had to witness. What is this here?
This here? Walt asks, as he pokes at the ghee floating at the top
Of his fennel tea. We wish each other health
Before clinking ceramic cups: hail,
Walt Whitman; hail, Lauren Shufran. Then Walt Whitman is back
In adho mukha savasana, downward-facing dog, thinking
Can one disprove the untouchable
Simply by virtue of touching?