INDO-CORINTHIAN

The hand that carved it did with love

and pride,

apprenticed in Anatolian workshops

having hauled the marble over Asia,

releasing each acanthus leaf

and stem of the capital,

the scrolling volutes, effortlessly

supporting the massy burden

of the abacus on a whimsical fantasia,

each Mediterranean marble tongue

lapping at two-thousand years

of Gandharan sun.

So writes Vitruvius:

a young woman of Corinth

like a wild flower

wilted just as she blossomed.

                                                      Her nurse

overcome with grief

put all the baubles the girl had loved

into a basket

and placed it on the grave,

a tile on top to keep out the rain.

Beneath

an Acanthus root, put out it’s verdure,

curling in on itself beneath the tile.

Callimachus the architect

saw it there.

The soul’s deepest purples and indigos

finding hiding places

hollowed out in the flourishing shadow

of those alien leaves’ caress.

                                                    Beneath

their outstretched canopy

sprouting from a lotus,

immune to mortal lethargy and oblivion,

there sits the Buddha in stone

draped in

Greek himation

smiling like a subtle Apollo

guarded by Vajrayana who wields

Herakles’ rough-hewn club.

The Enlightened One raises

his hand in knowing

benediction.

Artists and poets

are bees, cross-pollinating.

The best of West and East

embrace across the known world.