Picturesqueness in hippie classicism
My friend was like no other friend,
the most outstandingly and typical of hippies,
if he'll excuse me, but I simply can't resist
describing him in something of his heyday,
when in Varanasi a good friend of mine encountered him.
I hadn't seen him for some years myself,
but that encounter made such a profound impression
on my friend, that actually he wrote a book about it.
John, forgive me if I give you now away,
but you have changed your face so often,
and you never have repeated any of your masks,
so no one, I assure you, will from this description
recognize you, if he ever met you at some other time.
His blond hair reached his waists, he being Jewishly convinced
that long hair, like the Sikhs maintain, ensured the strength
both physically and of character.
But add to this, great silver earrings in both ears,
the fancy dress of a most typical barefooted Hindu pilgrim
dressed in orange, beads and staff and beggar's bowl,
and so on, teaching westerners the ways of Varanasi
by the Ganga and its holiness, and most intriguingly
initiating them in other mysteries than they had ever heard of.
This my friend, who went out boating in a full moon on the Ganga
with the burning candles on the river
to enhance the effect of the moonlight
blending with some fleeting corpses
was a Russian from Saint Petersburg,
who there enjoyed the one trip of his life,
transforming him into some Atlantide philantropist,
seduced by the profound and irresistible initiation
which my friend produced,
a magic more abstruse than Castaneda's.
Where are you now, my friend, and in which shape will you be present
when I see you next at full moon by the Kanjenjunga
in the fullest glory of the Himalayas?
If I know it I will not betray it,
so that I once more can keep you for myself.
Poetry by Christian Lanciai
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Written on 2006-11-04 at 14:14
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