Dec 13, '62
Out with Peter Thurs. nite to Manikarnika ghat. Sat on stone ledges above the ash sand shelf filled with woodpile fires abuming cows putting their big nose heads near under the foot of the pile bed — flame lighting his forehead, eye most closed, chewing some yellow stalks of straw kindling — boy chased three cows out of the rectangle garden of fire — they were eating up a corpse litter prematurely — or horsing around in the way — the nearby corpse masked in white shroud lay back in the flames & turned black, knees hanging down, the veil burning away and one ear sticking too far out, later became a thin black mummy in flames — the furthest we saw lit up, later the bamboo attendants thwacked it in the middle and turned it face down in the flames, skull hanging over the side in the fire — the middle corpse had burnt thru the belly which fell out, intestines sprang up (that is) like a jack in the box charcoal glumpf — then its right leg and foot came up in silhouette as the pole boy shifted it to the top first, then the other leg and foot spreading big toes was poled up and over bouncing like a soft log — and his hand (or hers it seemed to have a charred bracelet round the forearm) slowly lifted from the chest as the bulk burned — fires playing orange around from black cranium along the sides, over the lifted hand — and the two feet flung back over detached and burning over the middle of the bed — like burning fear away — I thought, burning the dross inside me — Dogs curled asleep on the shady steps as the moon rose over the western sky with Orion near, and the flat plate of Ganges stretching up to the faraway river shore beach — fires reflected in the waters as we went away, white mist reddened flaring out over the water, blocked by the huge castle embankment steps & high Dharmashala of brick where the dying came to spend last days breathing smoke.
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