One of the great elders calls LA the way it (sometimes) is
Los Angeles is the Benares
by Howard McCord
Of the West; it is America’s
Holiest City.
No single part is more
Sacred than the rest.
In the ante-chamber of the San Fernando Valley,
All the angels which dance on the spire
Of City Hall, dance also,
Gravely and simultaneously
In the strange mind of Warren Beatty,
Who dotes on a single poet.
The same angels dance as dance
In Venice and on the harbor’s quays.
Along Sepulveda
The yogins smile at shop-keepers
And at five o’clock cluster along the sidewalk,
Kif-smoke rising in pious ejaculations.
The city’s river, an introverted
Ganga {Neti, not a river,
Neti, not this}
Is a thwart-running spinal
Column to the body perpendicular.
I bathe my soul there
Every dawn, a concrete mirror
Reflecting all.
At Varanasi, the burning ghats
Translate our bodies
Into smoke.
Here the Holy Sun
And Coppertone are the
Unguents of transformation.
This is not mockery,
But a firm persuasion of the wit
That’s known to all.
Dissemblance is in your eyes.
Sri Lanka lies off Santa Monica.
I see it now.
Its beaches burn against the sky.