In the Mouth of Melancholy, or Sigiriya

I keep everything in my lap, nothing is lost.
—Mahasweta Devi, “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha”

Under the oppressive July heat, I carry
my aching body, sweat-coated and glistening, 
up the staircase spiraling and spiraling skyward
until I arrive. Within, a sightless darkness—
as when one glimpses, in secret, the illegible 
insides of a mouth open in laughter. 
Walking into shadow, I feel behind me 
the slow stirring of light. Streaks of sun rippling 
across cave walls, lifting from their beds, 
one after another, the muralled-in women. 
(Each unseeing eye pierced with sight, each face, 
as if recovering from a dream, tilted in thought. 
How the body halts. How, upon the entry 
of light, a landscape transforms, the immaterial 
gathering shape, then, sense, as when—)
I trace, with my eyes, their outlines: hair 
like water-laden monsoon clouds, earlobes 
drooping under the weight of gold, bare breasts
brimming and bronzed with sun. Water lilies open
in their parsing hands, petals blushing at touch,
their thin walls, unmarked pages, creasing 
at the stroke. Dilated, I am lifted into the eyes 
of the stone-mute ones. Overcome in revelation, 
I am: unspeaking—mouthful of melancholy—carrying 
you—as flower or fetus—into delivery—