Adding a third, or a third added by Arthur Russell, September on Jessore Road, being a rhymed, ballad, journalistic record of a trip taken with Sunil Ganguly, who's a Bengali poet and myself, along the road between Calcutta and the Pakistan border, September 71, which was a time of millions of refugees flooding across East Pakistan borders into Bengal. So this is like a description of Salt Lake Camp outside of Calcutta, and then out on Jessore Road, into the flooded area near the East Pakistan border. You're going to tune up and, okay. Well, you can do it actually in any set of chords that's used, equivalent.

[01:08]

It would be F minor, B-flat major, E-flat. What we're going to do is just sort of start making me do a verse or something.

[02:47]

We had that little intro worked out. One, two, three, four. Millions of babies watching the skies, bellies swollen with big round eyes on Jessore Road. Long bamboo huts, no place to shit but sand channel ruts. Millions of fathers in rain, millions of mothers in pain. Millions of brothers in war, millions of sisters nowhere to go.

[03:59]

One million aunts are dying for bread, one million uncles lamenting the dead. Grandfather millions homeless and sad, grandmother millions silently mad. Millions of daughters walk in the mud, millions of children wash in the flood. A million girls vomit and groan, millions of children hopeless alone. Millions of souls 1971, homeless on Jessore Road under gray sun.

[05:07]

A million are dead, the millions who can. Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan, taxi September along Jessore Road. Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load past watery fields through rain flood ruts. Dung cakes on tree trunks, plastic roof huts. Wet processions, families walk, stunted boys, big heads don't talk. Look, bony skulls and silent round eyes, starving black angels in human disguise.

[06:13]

Mother squats weeping and points to her sons, standing thin-legged like elderly nuns. Small-bodied hands to their mouths in prayer, five months' small food since they settled there. On one floor mat with a small empty pot, father lifts up his hands at their lot. Tears come to their mother's eye, pain makes mother mire cry. On Jessore Road, two children together say, stare at me, no word is said.

[07:19]

Rice ration, lentils one time a week, milk powder for more weary babies. Meat, no vegetable money, work for the men. Rice lasts four days, eat while they can. Then children starve three days in a row, and vomit their next food unless they eat slow. On Jessore Road, mother wept at my knees. Bengali tongue cried, Mr. Please. Baby at play, I was washing the fly. Now they won't give us any more food.

[08:22]

Identity card torn up on the floor, husband still waits at the camp office door. The pieces are here in my celluloid purse. Innocent baby play, our death curse. Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys, crowded waiting their daily bread joys. Carry big whistles and long bamboo sticks to whack them in line. They play hungry tricks, breaking the line and jumping in front. Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt. Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage.

[09:32]

The guards blow their whistles and mock them with rage. Why are these infants massed in this place? Laughing in play and pushing for space. Why do they wait here so cheerful and dread? Why this is the place where they give children bread. The man in the bread door cries and comes out. Thousands of boys and girls take up his shout. Is it joy? Is it prayer? No bread more today. Thousands of children at once scream hooray. Run home to tents where elders await.

[10:35]

Messenger children with bread from the state. No bread more today and no place to squire. Painful baby, sick, shitty as God. Malnutrition sculls thousands for months. Dysentery drains bowels full at once. Nurse shows disease card. Enterostrat suspension is one thing or else chlorostrat. Refugee camps in hospital shacks. Newborns lay naked on mother's thin laps.

[11:56]

Monkey-sized, weak, old, rheumatic babe, aye. Gastroenteritis, blood poison, thousands must die. September, Jessore, road, rickshaw. Fifty thousand souls in one camp I saw. Rows of bamboo huts in the flood. Open drains and wet families waiting for food. Border trucks flooded. Food can't get past. American angel machine, please come fast. Where is Ambassador Bunker today? Or is Helios machine-gunning children at play?

[13:00]

Where are the helicopters of USAID? Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade. Where is America's Air Force of Light? Bombing North Laos all day and all night. Where are the President's armies of gold? Billionaire Navy's merciful bold. Bringing us medicine, food, and relief. Now bombing North Vietnam and causing more grief. Where are our tears? Who weeps for this pain? Where can these families go in the rain?

[14:05]

Jessore Road's children close their big eyes. Where will we sleep when our father dies? Whom can we pray to for rice and for care? Who can bring bread to this ship, blood found there? Millions of children alone in the rain. Millions of families weeping in pain. Ring, O ye tongues of the world, for they're woe. Ring out, ye voices, for love we don't know. Ring in the conscious American brain. Ring out, ye bells of electrical pain.

[15:09]

How many children are we who are lost? Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost? What are our souls that we have lost to care? Ring out, ye musics, and weep if ye dare. How many children are we who are lost? Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost? Ring out, ye musics, and weep if ye dare. What are our souls that we have lost to care? Cries in the mud by the thatched house sand drain. Waits by huge pipes in the wet shit field rain.

[16:15]

Waits by the pump well. Woe to the world whose children still starve in their mother's arms. Is this what I did to myself in the past? What shall I do, shoemill poet, I ask? Move on and leave them without any coins? What should I care for the love of my loins? What should we care for our cities and cars? What shall we buy with our food stamps on Mars? How many millions sit down in New York and sup this night's table on bone and roast pork?

[17:22]

How many millions of beer cans are tossed in oceans of mother? How much does she cost? Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams. Stinking the world and dimming star beams. Finish the war in your breath with a sigh. Come taste the tears in your own human eye. Pity us millions of phantoms you see Starved in samsara on planet TV. How many millions of children die in war

[18:23]

Before our good mothers perceive the great Lord? How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild armed forces that boast the children they've killed? How many souls walk through Maya in pain? How many bathes in illusory rain? How many families hollow-eyed war? How many grandmothers turning to gold? How many loves who never get bread? How many hands with holes in their head?

[19:23]

How many sisters' skulls on the ground? How many grandfathers make no more sound? How many fathers in war? How many sons nowhere to go? How many daughters nothing to eat? How many uncles with swollen sick feet? Millions of babies in pain. Millions of mothers in rain. Millions of brothers in war. Millions of children nowhere to go.

[20:37]

Millions of babies in pain. Millions of mothers in rain. Millions of brothers in war. Millions of children nowhere to go. Millions of mothers in pain. Millions of brothers in rain. That's G. Finish with mantra to Shiva.

[21:50]

No, no, finish with Om Mani Padme Hum. Here. You know the chords on that? A melody is proposed by Tarthang Togol again. Okay, it's a A, F minor A, C sharp. No, I'm sorry, F sharp, A, C sharp, and then E, F sharp. Well, the first chord is... Om Mani Padme Hum.

[23:08]

Om Mani Padme Hum. Sri. Om Mani Padme Hum. Sri. The final syllable, as proposed by Tartha and Tulko, a Bodhisattva compassion syllable, therefore moving from contemplation into Bodhisattva action in the world. Shri, Shri, H-R-I-H. Like the, I think on the premises somewhere, the Sukhothai, 12th century statue of Buddha walking forward into the world with Abhaya Mudra. Reassurance. MANI PADME HUM

[25:41]

Shri, Shri, H-R-I-H. A-H-M-E H-E-M-M-E H-E-O H-E-M-M-E H-E-M-M-E

[27:10]

H-E-M-M-E [...]

[28:32]

H-E-M-M-E [...]

[29:47]

H-E-M-M-E H-E-M-M-E M-A-N-I P-E-M-E M-A-N-I

[31:23]

P-E-M-E M-A-N-I M-A-N-I P-E-M-E H-E-M-M-E H-E-M-M-E

[32:32]

H-E-M-M-E H-E-M-M-E H-E-M-M-E M-A-N-I P-E-M-E H-E-M-M-E

[33:43]

H-E-M-M-E [...]

[34:44]

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