Come marauder, sword unscabbarded, lay
siege by deceit, wound mortal my coil again:
I live in aeons where millennia are puddles -
you will be assimilated, your venom spat out.
What of nations but the notions of separation,
people go, languages die like colours and petals
but here lies anchored, the soul of the world.
Deep in that recess where no man has gone,
by moonless nights, unfurled ancient
the song of the stars flowing in distant skies
Who knows when time began? Who clocked
the beginnings? Here I asked of nought and nigh,
here the endless vast, and out of a featureless past
speaks the wisdom that lights continents afar
heroic the call to selfless action in the field of war.
Here was love born, in all her colours, and the lore
of the unhinged compassion of the liberated soul
here I asked of the highest god, why none above?
and came war beating its chest, lust laden again
pillage and plunder of the savage kind
but, I live, I live, I live,
I live in the cave temples of the unknown world,
I live in the music of the evening sun,
I live in the dance of the spirit drunk of love,
I live in the ruins whose soul is beyond plunder,
I rise towering from the ashes,
There - flies the wheel of law on the horizon high
There is yet a mighty dawn waiting to rain
down light on the veiled world, free free,
I am a spark of that thirsting fire!
Developing poem on the occasion of the Indian independence day, the 15th of August. 'The wheel of law' is my free rendering of Ashoka's Wheel, the central symbol on the Indian national flag.
Part of inspiration for this poem comes from the stirring song Chai (immortalized by Ofra Haza in this version: youtube.com/watch?v=uadPjtoONnM ) hebrewsongs.com/song-chai.htm
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