A Winter Night in Brooklyn

a poem from Shambhavi Sarasvati at Kindred108. We're all kindred here.

We each encounter experiences that pierce us and then settle into our lives like beacons or touchstones or wounds or just stones.

For decades now, I’ve been trying to write about a brief moment during a single evening in Brooklyn and the lone voice of a human in mortal danger.

My problem has always been that there is no way to capture the specific, cadence and timbre of his voice, no way to make you feel what I felt then and still feel whenever I remember or am reminded of it.

There is no way to capture the combination of intoxication and utter clarity, panic and toneless factuality, the grain of his voice.

But during each of the 923 days since October 7, 2023, I have been reminded of this man while experiencing the lives and unaliving of Palestinians in Gaza.

I’ve concluded that my effort is a failure and will always be a failure.

But as one of my most beloved teachers once said, “Mistaking, mistaking, I travel the unmistaken path … forgetting, forgetting, I remember the unforgettable expanse.”¹

I hope you find something of value here.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

A Winter Night in Brooklyn

One winter night in Brooklyn
with streets icy and black
and the wind cutting through 
below zero degree cold,
my mother and I rode in a taxi 
to the Brooklyn Academy of Music
looking forward to something contemporary 
and probably atonal.

We stopped at a light.
Shuttered in the dark 
next to a tall building of faceless stone
a man huddled. 
His face was bright red from drink and the cold. 
His swollen hands jammed in his jeans. 
He had no hat or winter clothes.

We sat, warm and waiting for the light to change.
He spoke only four words 
in a flat and quietly desperate tone 

“I’m freezing. I’m freezing.”

His words, so naked and close to death, 
were not only for me, 
but for the unseen who might be listening.
The grain of his voice held 
whatever remained of a hope 
that help might arrive.
And now for 923 days since October 7th,
that same human need
that same human hope, on the edge of collapsing
that same address to us, the ghostly listeners
cuts through my bones. 

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Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

1. Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche