(Siddhartha's Son) I fail to comfort my mother once more when I find her alone by the river, water raining from her eyes like a heavy morning raga. Most exalted woman in six kingdoms, daughter of the fattest merchant prince, beauty marshaled from youth by a dozen attendants, dark hair flowing now like night, dark eyes seared in brine, abandoned like a wench in a country inn, counted less than dung for the fire, left without a backward glance . . . as he left me as well. How did I make him so sad? Even dancing girls who were not my mother with whom he spent his nights while my mother turned in bed alone girls of cinnamon and cymbals he could only see them rotting, prevision their home in the ground, their flesh rent and falling in sheets, how he spoke of their stink. Every bird betrayed him, each leaf was not as he would have it. His anger like the emptiness of a thousand echoing caves. I could never be enough for him, the way I do not suffice for her now, her son, who can never made that parched heart bloom, make her stir and turn in opening anticipation. If only I had been another sort of child, studious, devoted.  I broke whatever I touched, could not sit still. It was my place to make him green again.  What am I missing that I could not give him? And where can I find it now that he is gone?