The dark mud the initiates scoop up from the river and daub
—onto their bodies dries in the sun to a fine ochre gray.
It cracks in hexagons like the riverbed in drought, and at the joints
—like the hide of an elephant, which the initiates describe
as a mountain on four columns, an emergence of the earth
—inside which all its secrets recombine, a breathing
compendium—the temple that can move and think and feel.
—Its notable proboscis is both a trumpet and a spout for washing.
When the initiates wash off, it’s meant to represent
—victory over the material world, its “succession of errors, painful
wanderings, and long journeys by tortuous ways,” Plutarch says—a step
—toward the nonstop meadow they’ll enter after death. But when I
take my turn with the hose, I bet I end up loving being in the body
—even more than I did before, and to feel it returned to me
post-estrangement, freed of the mess I’d plastered on by choice,
—the way I sometimes choose walking back and forth in high heat
carrying a parcel, will be like rebirth, like getting to know
—life a second time, here in the cool quiet of a home, unpacking
provisions I had nearly forgotten about—a dozen apricots, this thistly
—flower I can’t pronounce, this crackling of cellophane like fire.
Timothy Donnelly’s fourth book of poems, Chariot, will be published this spring by Wave Books. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.
