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[SAM TAYLOR]
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  • Poems
    • from Body of the World >
      • Accident
      • Arc
      • John 3:16
      • Hologram
      • Original Sin
      • Realism: A Landscape of the Body at Any Longitude
      • Coda: For Whom the Bell Tolls
      • (more)
    • from Nude Descending an Empire >
      • The Book of Endings
      • Jataka Tales
      • The Book of Poetry
      • Celebration in Autumn
      • Testimony
      • Madagascar
      • America: An Autobiography
      • Slugs Mating
      • American Mystic
      • The Book of Revelation
      • Home
      • (more)
    • from The Book of Fools >
      • [First Taxi]
      • [Friend]
    • New Poems >
      • Postcards from Babel
      • Poem in Search of an Ending
      • Animation
  • Books
    • Nude Descending an Empire
    • Body of the World
    • The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse
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JATAKA TALES


From my life as a Christian peasant
I cross my forehead and chest solemnly after kneeling.
From my life as a Sioux, “All my relations.”
From my life as a Jew, I curse God in the daylight,
then steal back at night to kneel in the moon.
From my life as dust, I call all things father
and no place home.  From my life as water,
I can rest only in the lowliest places.
From my life as a traveling salesman,
I can’t stop talking or dreaming of maps,
but from my life as a stone, I have yet to speak.
From my life as a Russian streetsweeper
I eye women carrying bags of groceries
with suspicion.  From my life as a clergyman,
all the tears of a body, more than the sea.
From my last life as rain, this endless longing
for the roots of the earth and a woman’s shadow.
And, again, from my life as dust, this muted yes,
this meaningless assent to all things.


Originally published in Agni Online.
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  • *
  • Poems
    • from Body of the World >
      • Accident
      • Arc
      • John 3:16
      • Hologram
      • Original Sin
      • Realism: A Landscape of the Body at Any Longitude
      • Coda: For Whom the Bell Tolls
      • (more)
    • from Nude Descending an Empire >
      • The Book of Endings
      • Jataka Tales
      • The Book of Poetry
      • Celebration in Autumn
      • Testimony
      • Madagascar
      • America: An Autobiography
      • Slugs Mating
      • American Mystic
      • The Book of Revelation
      • Home
      • (more)
    • from The Book of Fools >
      • [First Taxi]
      • [Friend]
    • New Poems >
      • Postcards from Babel
      • Poem in Search of an Ending
      • Animation
  • Books
    • Nude Descending an Empire
    • Body of the World
    • The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse
  • About
    • Bio
    • Mailing List
  • Contact