Am Stung
Poem — Daily Poetry for The Master of Works #38
My virtues were brief and vices enduring
The tumult of my deeds sowed ruinous seeds,
From earth clime repulsed I turned despairing
To the sky-veiled hope of far bright heavens.
My stormy pleas mounted to the heights
On a ladder of feeling fastened by despair,
I summoned my hundred pleading tongues
And bid them join forces to a single prayer.
My tongues then their utterances twined
And fashioned a lasso of verses aspiring,
Over mind’s walls they occultly sneaked
And reached the gates heaven-bordering.
Lo, the gates were ajar and no god did guard
The entrance and the great halls were silent,
The thrones were empty and strangely cold
As if gods abandoned their sun-wrought nest.
I scoured the sacred groves and corridors,
Scanned the frescoed walls and columns of light.
At last I stumbled on a chamber with a presence
Seated by a table with quill of will and force omnipotent.
Seemingly human and more than the gods
Resembling an aspired for face back on earth.
I queried, “Wither the gods and the daemons,
Wither the aiders of us with a human birth,
And who pray art thou, familiar yet unknown
To all the packed scrolls of my memory,
Dost thou now people all of heaven all alone
And play all parts of the celestial story?”
He replied, “Far hast thou wandered,
Scoured the earth roads and heaven-halls
With all their resident gods now emptied,
Vain is thy climb to these rarefied heights.”
I asked, “But thou art here and must know
What befell the mighty hosts of the ages,
Whose word heeding did they go
Away from their function and home stations?”
“Mine were the decrees, the injunctions irresistible”,
He said. Appalled, I cried, “But what of earth
And our prayers and our labours in that air dismal,
Our souls must bear the penalty of mortal birth?
Where the voice of counsel, the light that leads,
Where the calm ear and heart all woes to heal,
Are we then orphaned on a globe careless,
Our lives a cruel fiction, bizarre and surreal?”
Said he, “O walker of the mortal mists,
Thou art by the shadows and tales baffled,
Nursing meagre woes with frenzied cares,
Too distracted the saving silence to heed.
A scheme is at play, divinely unerring,
Through the mortal routine the celestial
Miracle unfolds in being and becoming,
A flawless alchemy to transmute the mortal.
For this are all the gods dispatched
And none remains to answer prayers here.
Return then to the globe time-bound
And seek thy release in the earthly air.”
I asked, “In what mountain or valley shall I find
These gods who have balm for our disease,
On what river bank is the answer to be beheld,
Pray tell kind sire whose words familiar grows!”
He said, “Not in these, nor temples or caves,
Nor the icons of old speak from lips of stone.
In body and body the catalyst resides,
And in action of gods as men and in men
Is the future birthed, the slow spiritual dawn.”
Burdened yet I asked, “O thou who knowest,
What name is thine, thy words are a veritable sun!”
He replied, “All names are mine, all thou canst
Utter, all that subtle minds can conceive
And all that bursts out from tongues subtle.”
I pleaded, “Grant me then refuge, my soul receive,
Shelter me from the hours and deeds ignoble.”
He said, “Not to shrink from the low or high
Art thou dispatched O labourer in the mire,
Battle the dismal hours, from effort do not shy,
All thou doest and thinkest to me do offer.
By rememberance and action is built the bridge,
The stairway for souls is in the body found,
The clay and bronze build the golden age.”
“But who art thou of such exact decrees?”, I asked,
“What veil is upon my eye that I can see not,
What spell dost thou command upon me,
My soul thrusts towards thee in my breast
And my heart cries, ‘It is He, it is He’”
Silent he remained and shed a smile
And my being whirling drowned in Self,
A vestige remained to savour and tell
Of my rendezvous with Him who is all and myself.
Hence, when thou findst me in lone rapture careless
Know, O stranger, am stung with my Master’s grace.
