the only thing
that we have come to understand
(in droves we came to stand
we the delirious and horny other
who frothed at a thousand and one mouths
jet lagged and lovehungry who slept)
under its dark wet awnings
black scale tiled prayers
of roofs on empty houses
on the front lines of silence

like rootless trees we drove our cars
our bicycles our drunken private soldiers
to the end of reason and
it was still

there striking us with bamboo shoots
which we preferred to being shot
(though both are equal in invoking the infinite)

we found the whole in the side
of the earth and lived next to temples
slept in shrines were roommates
with gods and God and

mountains after the air after rain
that layered shadow of onions
edible root of lotus lettuce
let us inside the joke is freezing
whose lifting tells the corners
of lips cast ten thousand years ago
in bronze in gold and carved
in the aching knees of cypress
so that we breathe life
into the thing that is still

what we came here to find
and we are still searching