NORMAN DUBIE

from The Spirit Tablets at Goa Lake
         —a long poem

For George Starbuck

This futurist poem enjoys the broken narration of its hero, Paul Ekajati, an amateur mathematician who once taught the Calculus on our moon. He is now an exhausted buddhist Vajramaster living in a small village at the Bakavi Lake Mining Colony on Mars. The year is 2277. Yeshe Khandro is in her last black ovum. Or, I should say that a raised mischievous voice in the poem belongs to a dakini 'wisdom traveler in space' and that she is the destroyer of the Vega Remnant, LXT. There are eleven spirit tablets that survived the wrathful dakini Khandro. Our hero is on Mars to investigate a lost civilization, Keet Sleet, who are believed to be the source of our galaxy's 108 spirit tablets, the sacred Mk' hagro. The Snakedeath Wreath, that took all life in the Vega II Cluster, killed Ekajati's wife and brother. He has solemnized his anger for the Khandro. And he believes she hunts him—even in the very lovely prayers with which he begins his mornings.

—Norman Dubie
   September 9, 1999

   Table of Contents, The Spirit Tablets at Goa Lake
   Contributor's notes

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