A Himalayan vale; green barleyfields snowfree
below the raw horns. By the old hall, one tree.
A martial arts school. Parvati crushes more
than boards with fists! Crush on Master Kumar.
He awkwards like a novice at her touch; all no.
Weird accidents bloom round her: guilt? Or so
she deems. Yet Parvati goes on long-
ing for Kumar, though "I know it's wrong."
The final exam: each student alone
must break into a windowless room
and ward off Master's storm of limb
flailing from that soot-black tomb.
Most students pick the massive brass
lock, or crack a leviathan plank
Off the ponderous door.
But Parvati in love gets a rotary saw
and carves a hole in the wall!
A groundfloor room; no ninja feat
but slow--stucco tough as concrete.
A student grind. (But not at all
the grind Parvati has in mind.)
Master Kumar can't jump her (so to speak). He
dare not near the mandala blade. Once she
opens her hole, it lets in day. Parvati beaming sees
Kumar pinned in glow. And rather than crawl
through her oval portal to him, she only calls,
"Beloved master, please come forth." Bare appeal!
Is this a long-planned tactic, or illicit longing's haze,
or both, inseparably blent? Unsure himself, he stalls.
So you tell me, O reader wise! Is Parvati
better or worse than classmates acting right?
Who love their proper peers, who dutifully
Open ritual doors and simply fight?
No moralizing here. I can only say
her peculiar's global: oblique, a tilted way
to love. To crack conundrums too.
Parvati perpendicular to all! A spire
is not a field. Can we barleys judge her skew,
her dilating, disarming desire?
