I must be God
Awareness darts as lightening
Touching mountain tops
Diving ocean beds
Fingering the pollen on pretty passion flowers
Touching the powder onto the forehead
Making yellow ‘bindis’ out of them
I must be God
Twirling pristine planets with my hands
Like spin-tops in air
Repeating hymns into nothingness
Listening to my own voice
Ruffling the ether
And mediating on the ripples therein
I must be God
An unknown string pulled somewhere
Coming back to stare at it
And recognizing the millions within
Each pair of eyes registering a separate tale
Each smile chronicling another
Every touch a discrete experience
I must be God
Falling squat
On the canopy of the tallest Amazonian trees
Sliding down with long tailed monkeys
Grazing the bark with bugs and microbes
To find the earth humid and warm
Teeming with a million encounters
I must be God
Like the embryo embedded in folds
Nimble fingers weaving life
Into the tiny body that sleeps
And breathes wisps of prayers
Whose eyes are shut, seemingly tight
But it only discerns with my eyesight
I must be God
And choking with the smoke
I paint myself the color of ash
I continue to die the same death
Dampening my hands with blood
Tear drops etching my cheeks
And the heart breaking over
I must be God
I am the mirage in desert lengths
I am the breath of dying earths
I am the mother’s dormant blessing
I am the rope that strengthens the vine
I am the belief in every sanctuary
I am the legs that tread every cemetery
I am the waves that whip the shore
I am the voice that you almost hear
I am God, I am God
6 comments:
Beautiful and Divine!
Reads like Bibhuti Yoga ( Chapter 10, Bhagavat Gita).
The best lines are " Ruffling the ether and meditating on the ripples there in", " Twirling pristine planets", " Repeating hymns into nothingness", "I am the mirage in desert lenghths", " Bilief in every sanctuary " and many more.
Here is modern Cosmogeny woven with Adwiat Vadanta- Science and Spirituality twined and twirling like " Spin tops in air" crysallising into the best poetic expression I ever read.
Poetry is the Amrut ( nectar) that is born of churnig the vast ocean of milk. You have found yourself out atlast! Wish more of the kind from your pen. Nana.
From: Binod Nayak binodnayak@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: "On thinking about the Gods"
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:47:43
Julie:
Who said, "God is dead"? He is alive and well -- in the pollens of the pretty passion flowers -- in the microbes of the Amazon that escape the annihilation of the worlds -- in the millions of hungry faces that stare at us -- the voices that we almost hear -- in the vermillioned pebbles and stones beneath the lonely banyan trees that suddenly appear from no where on endless village footpaths of India --and above all in the thundering hymns that promise to sanctify us, to elevate us to be one with the Gods. Nietzsche was only imagining the premature death of God. Our gods live with us -- talk to us -- and remain circumscribed only by our own imagination.
Undoubtedly we "construct" and "deconstruct" the gods only to escape the limits of our space-time continuum. Even the expanding and parallel univeses are not big enough for us. Wittgenstein said, "The sense of the world must lie outside of the world." He was referring to the rational and formal systems like the languages and mathematics. Little did he know that the finite man wants to be infinite. He wants to escape the drudgery of the finite -- to be one with the gods -- the infinite. He wants to be "outside of the world" only to make sense of his finite world. May be, he even wants to escape infinity to reach the transfinite.
Reality is boring, harsh, unmanageable. And hence we take refuse in God -- the unreal -- to deal with our realities. The rational man tries hard to understand himself in this irrational world. But he cannot understand life without understanding his imagined God. But then again he cannot understand God without understanding his own imagination. The inherent circularity makes us reach the infinite -- bootstrap us in an infinite loop like an "unconditional go to statement."
God is beautiful. But the tyranny of God that comes with "conditioning" has subjugated man in an inescapable battle with himself without an end in sight. Undoubtedly imagination is our only savior. But can we understand our own imagination -- the ultimate link with God. The instrument of "objective correlative" that modern poetry devised is a powerful tool. In the "I must be God" they bloom organically to stretch one's imagination beyond the confines of daily life. May be, just may be, by stretching our imagination we will escape conditioning and hence annihilation.
Thank you for sending your beautiful poem that allowed me to think about my personal god and beyond.
Bhaina
I smell serenity and calm
Perhaps that is God :)
Dear Nani,
Namaskar! Do you remember me? I am Rashmi Ranjan, you batchmate of M.Sc. & M. Phil. Nice to see your blog. I knew about your webpage from Narendra, my wife Jyoti's batch mate.
This poem took me to a different level altogether.
Wonderful to know that you are treading a path that balances both spiritual & temporal.
May God bless you in your quest!
Best regards,
Rashmi
Dear Rashmi!!! Is that you??? I tried to access your blogger profile but failed. If you see this note please send me your email address. It would be lovely to communicate with you after 15 years!
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