Discovered Poetry--Found Buried Amid The Prose

A dancer who is worshiped as a part-time god,
A female mystic who inhabits a cremation ground
Drinking from skulls,
A sculptor of Hindu idols who believes
He is creating live deities,
A Tibetan monk who enrolls in the Indian Army
In the hope of returning to his homeland,
But ends up killing Pakistanis.

They are survivors from a seductively various world.
Ascetics and mystics,
Mendicant singers and dancers,
Yogic initiates and outcasts.

The nun Prasannamati Mataji is a follower of Jainism.
Mataji’s gentle companion,
Mortally ill with tuberculosis,
Took her own life in the Jain fashion,
Starving herself to death
By stages,
In ritual self-purification.

Mataji is afflicted with the sin
Of intensely missing her.
Mataji has decided to follow the same
Slowly suicidal path,
Although her health is good
And she is still young.

Manisha Ma Bhairavi,
A mystic, worships the demonic god Tara.
She has fled her violent husband
And even deserted her children
To find refuge among sadhus,
Wandering holy men,
In a Bengali cremation ground.
She seeks comfort among other tolerant outcasts
In the goddess’s care.

Ash-smeared and naked,
They sip tea and listen to cricket on the radio.
“It is here, in this place of death,
Amid the skulls and bones and smoking funeral pyres,
That we have found love."
.
[These words, which read as poetry--were discovered amid the statements of a very common form, the book review. They did not reside adjacent to each other but hide among the the ordinary statements of book selling, emerging to be heard only when we listened with the mind's ear. -je] from a review of the book, "Nine Lives," by William Dalrymple and reviewed by Colin Thubron whose next book, "To A Mountain In Tibet" will be published in March (New York Times Book Review dated July 18, 2010)