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.
Up on the granite cliff
In the rock-cut caves
In tall
Jars
Of stone
Are ranged the rolls of palm leaf scrolls
That caught 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 sounds, the syllables, the brush strokes,
The ring of the chisel-hafted hieroglyph,
The eloquence of flowers,
All kept with care
From the child’s fist-drawn scribbles
To the holy vedas of the rishis,
Seers from the stars
All kept, with none slipped into the abyss
None swept aside
There
Are bundled reams
Of cotton
Cloth in all the colors of creation:
The pale-footed hue
Of the mourning dove and her mate,
The nestled orange feathers
Of the northern flicker,
The banded tail
Of the sharp-shinned
Hawk,
Shades of the stout
Trunks of the ficus
And the teak
The red glint
Of the setting sun
Across the pebbled upland creek
The 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
To ride along the clouds
Of each new dawn
That sings
On the shining cosmic
Tide
Every delight
Of the dance
Of the caterpillar
On the rain-bent
Amarillis.
In the sacred annals
Of her book-filled jars
All knowledge, beauty
And infinity
All that is real
Nothing lost.
And now the swans fly
Higher
In the air
Of crystal frost
Among the green enchanted 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
Then too, remembered is the way
To skip
Among the stars
Or 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 cliff-faced shore
And how to make
One’s way to the deepening core
Of the moss-footed forest
In an elvan autumn,
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 mringdam?
Where the bells that peel
At dawn?
Where the peace
In the mourning call
Of the swans and the flocking geese?
And where the soft bleating 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.
Written around 2010
© Sharon St Joan, 2021
If you like this poem, you might also like this website, Forest Voices of India https://forestvoicesofindia.com
