"The Song of the Tangle."
The background of this for him is
that Allen Ginsberg was visiting me in Kyoto one summer,
and we went out in the hills far north of town
on a very hot day, and found a little Shinto shrine
in a completely isolated, mountainous, wooded area.
Walked up under the great tall trees and up the
walk to the shrine, and paid our respects
to the god of the shrine, and then
noticed that someone had placed an offering of first-class sake
right at the foot of the entrance up inside
the first enclosure, where you're not supposed to go.
And so we took over the prerogatives of the gods
that afternoon.
[LAUGHTER]
Sat on the wooden god platform and drank the god sake
and looked all around.
[LAUGHTER]
Song of the tangle.
Two thigh hills hold us at the fork round mount center.
We sit all folded on the dusty, plain, planks of a shrine.
Drinking top class sake that was left for the god.
Called tree halls, the sun passed the summit.
Heat sunk through the vines, twisted sassa.
Cicada singing, swirling in the tangle.
The tangle of the thigh.
The brush through which we push.