from Devadatta’s Poems

He tells me a woman more exquisite, more exotic
than any of the luminous objects found in the zodiac,
will come into my life. Yasodhara, I ask? He stays
silent, turns to a farmer and tells him he’ll lose
two sons to floodwater, a granddaughter to thieves,

his wife and prize geese to a disease-ridden jackal.
He tells a young boy his mother will be bitten by a cobra
at dawn, a woman that her eldest son will fall madly
in love with a swineherd. Look, I don’t believe in the fatal
necessity of the stars, I don’t believe the lines

on a hand lead to truth, but I’m tempted to offer him
more money if he’ll cast his eyes further to see 
what hangs at the hub of my sidereal wheel as it mills
across time and space. Now I hear him tell a woman
of a runaway comet, how Saturn is caught

in the claw of the Crab, how her moon in Virgo
will soon turn balsamic. What a gouger he is, a hyena,
a snake in the grass! All morning in front of the temple,
rolling his blanched eyes back into his head, costing
people’s lot, pinpointing ill-luck ... I could do that!

Judith Beveridge

CONTENTS: JUNE 2012