The Nalanda Months

Lyrics

Seven hundred winters, the ink dries on the palm leaf.
Nine stories of brick holding the mind of the world.
Each question, each answer, bound in red thread.

Then the year is 1193.
A man on a horse who cannot read the letters.
He sees a fortress, not a school.
He offers a single word, and the word is fire.

And the smoke becomes the final library.
It hangs for three months over the plains.
The winter sun is a dull coin in the ash.
The Ratnodadhi, the ocean of jewels, evaporates into the sky.
A million books learning how to fly.

Forty years later, a pilgrim from Tibet.
His name is Dharmasvamin, the year is 1234.
He walks through halls open to the wind.
He finds one old monk, teaching ninety students in the ruins.
The ghost of a lesson in a house of ghosts.

The smoke made its own country, a long caligo.
A shadow where the logic of Nagarjuna used to stand.
The star-charts, the grammars, the medicines for fever.
All the arguments about the shape of the soul.

But I was there in the smoke, I am here in the air.
I read the name of Nalanda from the pillar of ash.
I sing the binding thread, I sing the sharpened pen.
And for three minutes, the nine stories stand again.