Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Krishna

they say, "he's dark,
your Krishna.
dark as the stormy night
he was born."

i used to turn away,
had no answer
to their taunts.
wondered why
others were made so fair.

the years have passed,
and I've stopped looking
at people, at their gods,
and learned to look inside.
i know now, why, my Krishna,
you are the dark one.

so great is your love for me,
to cleanse my soul,
from its darkness
you took on its colors
and made me new.

2 comments:

balihai said...

madam, this is a collection. please, do not waste time. i insist.

david raphael israel said...

mmm, superb. To write such poetry and have it ring just right, is no mean feat; it's internalized and made new. The initial lines are familiar, but I don't recall (in traditional works) the explicit explanation spelled out just so as at poem's end (though likely, as Sunil suggests, this is an olden mystical archetype; it's a paradox as basic in its context as, say, what became the Christian doctrine of divine sacrifice in another context).

Rarely is such a poem seen in English without an issue of basic stiltedness; -- a point this moves smoothly & well beyond.