The town absorbed in pooling dusk

is poplar masts, all willow-tossed,

and lost beneath the valley’s toil

of darkening green. Like a sea

in oils — and just as still — that’s seen

to lap-unwrap some jutting coast,

this mass has set in a boil against

its sheer surrounds of sand-dry earth.

 

They floored an ocean long ago:

this furred and whorled and welling dark

in arabesques unfurled below,

the jagged surge, its patient shore.

While Buddhists say that when the Phags-

Pa Dhitika was here he drove

a lake away, and that’s when Leh

emerged as land. The story stays.

 

As Buddhist lore assumes the town

submerged in its evening lake,

we stand uphill, my dogs and I,

a motley, straggling band of four —

one dogs my heel, two others stray

to scent and mark the Tethyian shore;

and all intent, each one alone,

we slowly turn towards our home.