Singing in the Pandaleshwar Caves

Singing in the Pandaleshwar Caves
At noon in a dim chamber fifty feet under 
Pune’s dusty roar, my voice
threaded through a hundred voices 
and slipped out a hole in the dark.
It became an eye watching 
the cave’s ear swallow taxi bleat,
creak of neem tree and truck honk. 
The cave’s black cup caught the notes 
and pushed them on beyond a precipice 
marked, Be aware of God.
Since then, my throat has kept 
a dark space.

I am careful of hosannas vaulting
to contralto heaven, of earthquake bass 
and monkey clarinets in priestly procession. 
I press back from the temples of chattering 
prayer wheels, and into silence—
the inner bell of nothing 
thinner than a muezzin’s aria. 
Sound of no sound sinking 
deeper than a stone’s freefall in a well.
The sound that hits water 
as a human slap with a celestial echo.