Stealing away from the hotel lobby, I told him to take me to the central shrine. I looked across at my driver. His hand was on his heart, his eyes pink with tears. He fled the country years ago only to sneak back in for the festival. Nothing I thought I knew had prepared me for this. Unemployed mullahs crowding the street. Madness, the human swell, exalting. And then there was the fog in Varanasi. The beggars, the bodies committed to the holy waters, exalting. Don’t run away from this. The city of death is the city of joy. This is paradise. This is what we have to work with. We must live into the riddle of how to find joy in this uncertainty. Now here we are talking across the waters. An introduction to the half-known world and the half-known life. A call to cherish everything. You begin knowing and end up not knowing at all.

Found poem based on Pico Iyer’s interview with Tricycle about his new book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise.