I walked three miles with Ghandi
along the silk road that runs
so respendantly around the city's shopping center.
Like the pictures in my history book He had a face
like a library, stilt-legs
and eyes shaped like peach nuts.

I asked him, just because he was there,
and I was there, and I had already bought my
falafel, wheat-bread and soy milk:

what do you think
a soft, blond person can
offer? I cannot braid or weave in
bright tapestries of beads, mud, or twine, or
jump and dance as the gymnast.My body
is made for sitting, my mouth for humming
my eyes for staring at a screen
my hands for picking up some socks or possibly
brewing a nice, radiant vat of Maccaroni.

My mind; too— I cannot remember a word
that my Great-Gradmother spoke. I cannot think
like a haiku poem; the words in between
are my crutches. What then, can I offer;
Me? With my silver-white hairs
and freckles and dish-red hands?

Ghandi turned then, and I smelled the sweet
scent of peaches. He waited for me, and I
walked up beside him. He placed a
liquid palm on the nape of my neck.
The round glass goggles hid his eyes. With his voice
full of dates, honey, and camel fur, he said:

Jehovah, with his golden limbs,
and his fire-blue eyes; his linen
face and hair like the black lamb's skin;
Jehovah himself, (for God's sake)
though he taught on the salt lakes of Abyssinia
and will one day stand on the tip of Megiddo

Even He, addressing those
with wide blue stripes at their hems;
claimed nothing more than that his fingers
were strong enough to divide bread and fish,
His eyes good to see those who touched his garments.

And his body, Ghandi said, was lean like
a scholar's and wanderer's (then, glancing at his own
railroad track of ribs)
A body of flesh and blood, and breakable bone
and stretchable sinew. It could stand no more than
six hours of hanging. Six hours, and no more.