This morning I misread Tantrism for Tourism and it’s been downhill
ever since. Elephants are dying in the Okavango Delta and no one
knows why. A man I love crumples into himself on a railway
platform away from home. My sister calls to tell me about
her aged cat, who keeps collapsing, then rising to roam
the house in wobbly confusion. It is all falling, falling.
A poet on the internet talks about a Jewish legend,
where we are given tears in compensation for
death. I would cry about the perfectness of it
except I’m incapable. My ophthalmologist
has made a diagnosis of dry eye so I
must buy my tears in a pharmacy.
I think of what this is doing to
all the rotten grief inside me—
unable to create salt bathing
pools to fire up my wounds,
this body powered by
breath, dragging its
legs through
the vast
summers
that have
lost their will to
transform me. All
the unknowing we
must accept and fold
like silk pocket-hankies
pressed against our chests.
The theory of spanda in
Tantra advises you to live
within the heart. I’m a tourist
here, so bear with me, but imagine
a universe vibrated into being. All things
made and unmade by a host of small movements,
my favourite being matsyodari —throb of fish when
out of water. Just the word throb, you understand, hints
at longing, but also distress, and suddenly, language opens.
All the etymologies I used to think were useless in the arena
of bereavement are echoing over the great plains of beige carpet,
saying, We interrupt your weeping to tell you the world is real, rejoice!
The elephants in the Okavango are keeling over like ships. No one
can say why. A die-off sounds worryingly like a bake-off but
without the final prize. At night I squeeze drops into my
eyes, whispering the magic words, Replenish, ducts,
replenish. If you play elephants the voices of their
dead, they’ll go mad for days, searching for
their beloveds. To fall is never an action
in slow motion. The snap of elastic
in your pants, going going gone.
Belief caving in like a bridge.
My heart, your heart, the
elephants’—here’s a
crazy thought—
what if they’re
dying of
grief?