On her swan-ringed island
Of mist
And falling petals
Of song,
Saraswathi stands,
Holding the wild scent
Of the lilies of eternity
In her silver hand,
Her fingers braiding bright
Visions
Of the dawn-lit past,
Of myth-hatched eons, long
Ago
Singed in the flames
Of endings,
Half-forgotten though
Their names,
In the days that followed after
Of snow
And white-
Drifting mountains.
On the lapping lake
Pairs of swans sail
And shake
The water from their wings;
Their white and gray cygnets trail
Behind
All in a row
Bobbing on the ruffled waves,
While up on the granite cliff
In the rock-cut caves,
In tall
Jars
Of stone
Are ranged the rolls of palm leaf scrolls,
That catch the words
Of poems flown,
The whispering of languages, long gone,
That went on the wandering wind,
On the wings of the waters,
The sacred song, the notes of forest birds,
The eloquence of flowers,
The sound, the syllable, the brush stroke,
The ring of the chisel-struck hieroglyph,
All kept with care,
Every one,
From the child’s first fist-
Drawn scribbles
To the holy vedas of the rishis,
Seers from the stars,
And then the chorus
By the daughters
Of the owl to honor the night’s shadow,
The dream-enchanted dark,
All kept,
With none slipped into the abyss, none
Swept
Aside.
There too
Are bundled reams
Of cotton
Cloth,
In the rainbow ribbons of creation:
The pale-footed hue
Of the mourning dove and her mate,
Ambling on the sunlit sand,
The orange-banded tail
Of the sharp-shinned
Hawk, with mystic eyes,
Shades of the stout
Trunks of trees,
Of the ficus
And the white-petaled teak,
The red glint,
The arc
Of the setting sun
Across the pebbled, upland creek
The sea-blue
Tint
Of the lotus
And the silver halo
Of the moon that beams
Through the indigo
Ocean of the swift-sailing night.
All abide,
Their essence
Set to ride
Along the clouds
Of each new dawn
That sings
On the shining
Cosmic
Tide.
In the sacred annals
Of her book-filled jars
All knowledge, beauty,
And infinity,
All that is real,
With nothing lost.
Now the swans fly
Higher
In the air
Of crystal frost
Among the green wooded lands.
Within her magic,
Translucent
Jars
The least stir
Is known
Of every creature,
The leaping, gray-pawed squirrels,
The rooting snout
Of the bristle-faced, brave boar,
Every delight
Of the dance
Of the dragonfly
On the rain-bent
Amaryllis,
Then too, remembered, is the way
To skip
Among the stars,
Recalled,
The olden, dwarven folk,
Their iridescent lore
Of how to weave a shimmering cloak,
Or fabricate
A flying ship,
Or stoke
An immortal fire
Against the bane-crossed
Cold,
Or travel fast
Like racing light,
The path to take
To a wondrous land
Of fairies, elves, and heroes bold,
The remedy for every ill,
How to ply
The sea
Of time to find the age of gold
Hidden on a cloud-ringed shore,
At the world’s end,
And how to make
One’s way through the deepening core
Of the moss-footed forest
In an elvan autumn,
Of leaf-sprinkled light,
All knowledge past
And yet to be.
Where now the kind
Laughter
Of Saraswathi?
Where the haunting notes
Of the veena, and the light
Beat of the mridangam?
Where the bells that peal
In the skies of dawn?
Where the peace
In the morning call
Of the swans and the flocking geese?
And where the soft bleat of the goats
Clambering up the rock-strewn hill?
All wait,
Wild and free,
Still
In the luminous blue jars
Of the drifting sky
All that shines true,
One day,
To be born anew
When the mist
Settles
With the glad-crying
Swans of sunrise,
Over the mountains
Of a far country.
Ⓒ January 13, 2013 Sharon St Joan
Image: Painting by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) /Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.” / Goddess Saraswathi