Poetry - Soot

Vesper Hymn

Now, on sea and land descending,

Brings the night its peace profound: hymn

Let our vesper hymn be blending With the holy calm around.

Soon as dies the sunset glory, Stars of heaven shine out above,

Telling still the ancient story— Their Creator’s changeless love.

Now, our wants and burdens leaving To his care who cares for all,

Cease we fearing, cease we grieving; At his touch our burdens fall.

As the darkness deepens o’er us, Lo! eternal stars arise;

Hope and Faith and Love rise glorious, Shining in the Spirit’s skies.

Magic and the believer

“I can teach you magic”, said the magician to the fool.

“But I can’t teach you how to believe.

That dear friend, lies in the jurisdiction of your own soul, even I can’t go there.”

Then with a wry grin, he added, “But you don’t have to know magic but just to know how to live.”

And with that, the magician disappeared just as suddenly as he had appeared.

And the fool, no clearer in his doubts and no other recourse but to walk on.

Nearer yet, unbeknownst to his own understanding’s despair.

The Wheel turned, the ages the burned. A believer for a Magician, now that’s another story. And a pawn in time as a destination for the fool.

An Agni Mantra

A hymn to Agni (Fire):

Pratnosi kam idyo advaresu Sanat na hota navya ça satsi. Svam ça Agne tanavam piprayasva, Asmubhyam ça saubhagya ayajasva ||

Calling upon, lauding, even devoting when the very path through the skies is filled in its creative bounty and sentient offering.

Agni, the divine priest, the tongue that talks to the gods, the messenger that has offered its audience for the ancient and contemporary alike, no matter when the soul, the constant in every lifetime.

The fire inside of me, embers inside of my body like divine horses, drink of the consciousness in the vassal and vessel as the fire that I am.

Grant in my being and experience, the fortune, illumination and unlimitedness of living the blessed life.

Surya Gayatri

Surya Gayatri – The hymn. (Rudra)

Om haam tanmeshaye vidyamahe, vagvishuddhaye dheemahi, tanno Rudro prachodayat.

Suryapustakanakam kritva Suryamantreh prapoojayat.

Om haam heem hoom haim haum ham Shivasuryaye namah.

Om ham Khakholkhaye Suryamurtaye namah.

Om hraam hreem sarva Suryayi namah ||

Om salutations of being from body and spirit, to knowledge and sentience, purified and evolved in expression, hailing divine inspiration, to Almighty Rudra that offers us his form we pray.

Fashioned from starstuff, the vessel of the Sun, illuminating into life, brilliant fire of the sun, the sun shining words.

Om, salutations of being into the directions of space. Guide my being, as the sun, as the root of existence, like the sun. Shiva, supreme, that is, all that is.

Om, in bowing to the hidden name, no longer. Now unlocked, in me, archetypical sun, in his image, in his form affirmed.

Om ignited, Om infused, as the sun, the eternal, all of it. Om Sun ||

Minerva

Artwork of Minerva from Indian Mughal emperor Akbar’s court, 1590 Minerva

“Those very groups of gods enter into You ; struck with fear, some extol (You) with joined palms.

Groups of great sages and perfected beings praise You with elaborate hymns, saying ‘May it be!’

O you, who in some pretty boat,

Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along

Turn back to look again upon your own shores;

Tempt not the deep, lest unawares,

In losing me, you yourselves might be lost.

The sea I sail has never yet been passed;

Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.

You other few who have neck uplifted Betimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated,

Well may you launch your vessel Upon the deep sea.”

Knock on wood

Knock knock knocking to adore.

I’d wrap a rhyme into a song obscured.

Singing vision, crooning ever-glow.

Like a breath of fresh air, ascending the shared tapestry of inner-most cores and care.

Intimacy the journey in repair. Words for paradigm mentioned to dimensional fare.

Fair and farther still. Adorable is ringing, outstanding still I await.

If I translated the falling of rain, the patter would still just be beats to a letter, affection in remain and again in the latter.

The simple resamples into a mystery until the complex begins to unravel.

To avail and travail, a surge emerges travelled within.

Profound in itself, a beacon in the light of another.

To drop the word, and pick up the spotlight.

A door creaks only momentarily keyed to groove.

To delight in your sunshine.

An evening to aid the odd ode in serenade.

Good evenings’ to remember, the dawn in the yawn, to dance instead.

The golden light in your magic hours in glimpse.

And since.

Gita

From the Bhagavata Gita : Gita

“Then, filled with wonder, with hairs standing on end, he, Dhananjaya, (Arjuna), bowing down with his head to the Lord, said with folded hands.

Arjuna said: O God, I see in Your body all the gods as also hosts of (various) classes of beings; Brahma the ruler, sitting on a lotus seat, and all the heavenly sages and serpents.

I see You as possessed of numerous arms, bellies, mouths and eyes; as having infinite forms all around. O Lord of the Universe, O Cosmic Person, I see not Your limit nor the middle, nor again the beginning!

I see You as wearing a crown, wielding a mace, and holding a disc; a mass of brilliance glowing all around, difficult to look at from all sides, possessed of the radiance of the blazing fire, and immeasurable as the sun.

You are the Immutable, the supreme One to be known; You are the most perfect repository of this Universe. You are the Imperishable, the Protector of the ever-existing religion; You are the eternal Person. This is my belief.

I see You as without beginning, middle and end, possessed of infinite valour, having innumerable arms, having the sun and the moon as eyes, having a mouth like a blazing fire, and heating up this Universe by Your own brilliance.

Those very groups of gods enter into You; struck with fear, some extol (You) with joined palms. Groups of great sages and perfected beings praise You with elaborate hymns, saying ‘May it be!’” – Chapter 11, Bhagavada Gita.

Scene from the Bhagavada Gita as Krishna, the charioteer shows his god-form to the archer hero Arjuna at the field of battle.

The Bhagavada Gita is one of the holy books of the Hindu pantheon in India. And this painting and poetry are a scene from the epic battle Mahabharata as Krishna takes on his all powerful form, known as Virat Swaroop.

Elemental seed

“And as the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower and fruit. Seed

Anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse

To see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible array ;

So Man looks out in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird, and beast.

Collecting up the scattered portions of his immortal body.

Into the elemental forms of everything that grows.

He tries the sullen North wind, riding on its angry furrows,

The sultry South when the sun rises, and the angry East,

When the sun sets, and the clods harden, and the cattle stand,

Drooping, and the birds hide in their silent nests.

He stores his thoughts.

As in store-houses in his memory. He regulates the forms.

Of all beneath and all above, and in the gentle West Reposes where the sun’s heat dwells.

He rises to the sun,

And to the planets of the night, and to the stars that gild.

The zodiacs, and the stars that sullen stand to North and South,

He touches the remotest pole, and in the centre weeps That Man should labour and sorrow, and learn and forget, and return.

To the dark valley whence he came, and begin his

labours anew.”

0 – The Fool and Love

There is an inertia to love, there syllables slip and meaning flits. Where the heights of one exist in the depths of the other. Like some parts of one have to see the eyes of the other.

Sheer want of affection cannot scratch that surface. Just as token existence outside of posterity cannot derive outside of its tether. So when do ideas and form meld, just as eternity catches up the ages to contemplation’s slight tilt of the head. The inner fire always deigns to speak, when the wind comes calling.

What in event bears the signature of the universe, rearing to get your attention? The motif to outshine the conscious motive.

But a state of inertia is no fit place for a discourse. So this course turns, like a tightened corset tug, kneading the reins to re-enter the boundless night.

Proof of love is in the other. It calls for no other ensign.

But for a lover, that is never enough. And identity toils, and form reappears to make its foil. Syllables catch their caches of words and attributes identify their adjectifying constitutes. Grammar makes itself out to call time.

The tertiary makes inertia. And its measure not without its trial. Attestation to bridge the subjective, and requite to meet its respite.

Parables compete with aphorisms and silence extends to after thought.

Laughter is sought, giggles a universal type-set to calm home, the feeling hones to recognise its marker, like a horse with no name, sure-footed yet to a mystic muse. Until enthuse articulates enough felt to call the same.

Travails of consciousness shadow ancient histories like a mystery in aim.

Like every other, hears a pond of empathetic acclaim. Despite and unlike any.

Consciousness, love and the Fool.

Picasso

Picasso Artwork : Self-potrait by Pablo Picasso.

“How like an Angel came I down! How bright are all things here!

When first among His works I did appear,

O how their Glory me did crown!

The world resembled his Eternity, In which my soul did walk;

And every thing that I did see Did with me talk.

The skies in their magnificence, The lively, lovely air,

Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!

The stars did entertain my sense,

And all the works of God, so bright and pure,

So rich and great did seem,

As if they ever must endure In my esteem.”

Bards

How many bards gild the lapses of time! bards

A few of them have ever been the food

Of my delighted fancy,—I could brood Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime: And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,

These will in throngs before my mind intrude:

But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; ’tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;

The songs of birds—the whisp’ring of the leaves— The voice of waters—the great bell that heaves

With solemn sound,—and thousand others more, That distance of recognizance bereaves,

Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

Adonis

– Words from Adonis, the Syrian poet (born Ali Ahmad Said Esber).

Adonis

“So that your body moves wisely so that I move with it

with what is above it below it.
and in between

so that I surround you and break any barrier that separates you from me.

I read the book of your priests

I grow into your origins.

I taste their creatures and personify them in my delusions so that you become the dot,

and I become the script and shape.
so that you become ‘From’ and what follows it .

I am not your sea
I am not the swans you wait for I have nothing but limbs.

Limbs that get lost.

After
I erased-discovered you,

lost in a fever whose outer reaches I have yet to discover.

‘About’ and what it possesses,
where words cannot contain me,

where only imaginings and symbols can contain me.”

Crystal Spears

Ring out ye Crystal spears, crystal

Once bless our human ears,

(If ye have power to touch our senses so)

And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;

And let the Base of Heav’ns deep Organ blow,

And with your ninefold harmony.
Make up full consort to th’ Angelike symphony.

For if such holy Song Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold.

Good after moon’s reflection

good Outer tread or inner reform.

The question ponders night and morn’.

The winds that take,

Insight of an answer’s make.

Upon day, repose, envision’s way.

Evening odds, nods an ode to ferry sway.

Good after moon’s reflection.

Inflections convey.

Virtue

In surrender, earnest and true, lie the aspirations and overtures to virtue. Virtue

All at once begun, woven and wondered into the collective of silence’s hum.

The residue reaches towards.

All-encompassing and harmonising like gentle heart-strums.

Imbued to burn and glow, like attributes and their afterthoughts in follow.

Honed to adjudge focus’ curve and steer forward.

Consciousness dissolving and evolving into ‘morrow.

Sunlight leads the day out of the way, and waves for night to hallow.

Yonder covers the horizon like a carpeted welcome.

Impelling emotions slowly spread their notions in overcome devotion.

A river of sentiment makes its way to be sanctified into the ocean. Never the same river twice but always into the same ocean, with sighs like ever-smiling eyes and clarified into a buttered shine.