Borrowing the colour of my consciousness emerald is green,
Ruby became red.
I gazed at the sky and
There was light
In the East, in the West.
Turning to the rose I said : "Beautiful",
Beautiful it became.
You may well object : All these are principles,
Far from the utterance of a poet.
I shall reply : Being truth,
Poetry this is.
I take pride in it,
Pride on behalf of all men.
On the very foil of human pride
Lies the cosmic Artisan's21 cosmic art.
The knower of Principles counts the beads
and controls his breath :
"No! No! No!
Neither emerald, nor ruby, neither light, nor rose,
Neither I, nor you."
Whereas, He who is infinite
has performed his asceticism
Within the reach of men,
He whom we call Self.
In the depth of that Self, light had intercourse with shade,
21 Vishvakarma, Indian variant of Vulcan
Giving birth to forms and
permeating all with relish.
Who knows what magic words transformed "No" into "Yes"
And lines and colours and pleasure and pain.
Call this not Principle :
My heart has rejoiced
By holding in my hand a brush and colour in a pot
In the assembly where composes the World-Self.
The savant retorts :
"The old moon with his cruel and cunning smile
Approaches stealthily near the ribs of the earth
Like a messenger from death,
Planning to wrest ultimately
her oceans and her mountains;
Among the mortals on the new register of ageless Time
A page will be filled with a zero,
Eating up the accounts of nights and days;
Human achievement will lose its feigned immortality,
Man's history shall be smudged
With the ink of infinite night.
The eyes of man's departure day
Shall wipe off all colours from the universe,
The mind of man's departure day
Shall suck dry all relish.
The tremor of Power reigning from sky to sky,
There shall be no light.
The musicians' fingers shall dance on
in a concert deprived of veena 22,
No melody shall be heard.
On that very day the Dispenser without poetry will be sovereign
sitting alone
In the blue-less sky
With the principles of existential mathematics, bereft of all personality.
And then throughout the vast universe,
At a distance and yet farther
in an infinite innumerable succession of worlds,
Nowhere shall resound this message :
"You are beautiful.."
"I love you..."
Shall the Dispenser resume again his asceticism
For ages to come ?
On dusks of deluge shall He keep on repeating :
"Speak, O speak!"
Shall He insist : "Tell, you are beautiful" ?
Shall He insist : "Tell, I love you."
[ Shyamali, "The Dark lady", 1936]
22 a lute.