The Temple Drummer and Piper

for J.C. Alldridge Flagellant! Flexor of the Temple's Flexuous moulded walls The high reliefs sallying through your Flaunting fingers Wrap the holy-comer with your Invocatory maul While word of Vedic prayer Seeps from some steepening Brahmin wall O stretched bowel of your potted paunch In perspiration's puffing piped paean Rivet the eyes of man and god Outside the walls of priestly palaver Monotonic bell and OM OM and monotonic bell OM OMM OM ©: T. Wignesan - Paris, 1957 (from Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961; first pub. in "Forum Academicum", University of Heidelberg, 1957)