Raag Basant
Like an uncarved block a novitiate faces his Muse,
Of becoming perfect has hidden possibilities;
Of losing sight of goals even greater ones.
While contemplating nature, men, great and small,
Priorities, ineptitude, both great and small;
While telling a grape from a grape, darkness falls,
And like a purple beetle on its back he sprawls,
A little more than nothing under the Milky Way.
“Can one cling to air to get back on one’s feet?”
He wonders in strange and sullen ways which are not
words.
Weary of gazing at stars, a sound startles him;
The block that became a beetle melts into a lyre.
Pervading drones build up in the unseen spheres
And sound the lyre’s strings to their higher will:
Tense progressions struggle in odd and long intervals,
The notes belly-crawl, sound microtones, then take
Sudden giant leaps. Vulnerability
And pain suffocate each other in mortal scuffle;
A creative urge labors and breathes invisible fire;
Unable to endure or flee itself, the lyre
Evaporates – suddenly lighter than air –
And rises as a melody to higher spheres,
Lending its form to them, in turn, attaining theirs.
