KRISHNA
(for Raja Rao)
Before he became a god
To tidy up the world, Krishna
Searched a thousand years,
Along the peaks, the lesser hills,
Each sudden plain, persistent star,
The columns of his thought,
Down deeply anxious limbs,
His great inclines of heart
To the rim of the world at sunset...
Searched among the maidens of the day,
The maidens of the night,
A face for Bindavan.
Under her consequential sun,
Computations of every rising moon,
That face grew, asserted
All his love, his dreams
Softly magical, destinations.
She gazed upon him
With a look of morning lotus,
Till each stood within the other.
So the blue god, his votive flute
Multiplying his love, the gopis,
Sporting with them all,
He sported with but one.
Perched upon a chord of time,
His yearning flute unfolds
The lovely burden of her eyes
To feed his nimble fingers.
Within the radiance of each note
So bound to her answering look,
The world revives, quickens,
Renews itself, turns whole,
Adores their love unparalleled.
And so they sit, ever moving,
Ever still, in stone,
In ivory, in us.
Edwin Thumboo
Revised on 16 Sept 2004
* Analysis of this poem in John Sinclair's ‘Poetic Discourse: A Sample Exercise' in The Taming of the Text. Willie Van Peer (ed.). London, 1998, Routledge, p. 258-279.
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