I’d decided long centuries
ago
To go far, far-off from my griefless
home,
And disappear into the non-self,—
As if to live another life, take part
In an experiment of negation
Formulated in possibilities
Of the fearless. I reached the spirit’s
end
Even as the day sank behind the hill.
Freedom I enjoyed, of not to be too,
And farther and farther as I drifted
The voice of the firmament grew
feebler,
And then suddenly all ceased. No more
hope
Breathed in the emptiness, and gulf
swallowed
Vague gulf, and clamorous
Eyed, followed me through the city. The worst
Yet was in the country of ignorance
Where truth easily succumbed to
falsehood.
Each grain of the farm’s yield was a living
Death, time annulling the creation’s
cause,
Deriding God’s smile. Here the
stars became
Worshippers of Darkness, and reckless wind
Blew southward carrying the malodour
Of putrefied flesh, and mortality
Walked through the sinful twelfth
aeon.
Into the long inauspicious night
Vanished the miracle of silver moon,
And the soul turned into a
dream-fiction,—
The omnipotent was its accomplice!
Is it that I just plunged into a sea
Of vast peace, like the joy that
sinks deeper
And deeper to find its sorrowless source,
To fathom new mystery underneath,
In the creation’s silent will? drunk
The wild honey-flame to taste the
sharpness
Of some odd tormenting delight? But
isn’t
The wide presence of Vishnu there all where?
RY Deshpande
16 June 2004