Arjun Shivaji Jain

To the Daughter of Ganga

Sweet Daughter of Ganga,

Woman,

You are the World.

I hear, and see, and smell, and touch

And taste every bit of you,

All the time, and everywhere.

Ocean of oceans, I swim in you,

You are the Dream of dreams.

You are the Life of lives.

You are Sex itself.

For all the golden-most rivers I’ve seen,

All suns in sparkling waters,

All deep, dark woods, and mists of steam

Fragrant of jasmine and frangipani,

And rose, and lemon, and all lush teas,

Sweeping, a-swirling, ‘cross powdery shores

Of sands, and snow as smooth and soft,

And delicious as pillows of cream;

All fires within and fires without,

Of all holiest hues the heavens have been,

Purples, and pinks, and crimsons, and blues,

Floating liquid beneath the ground;

The twinkling stars arrayed above

To light, delight, mysterious night;

And during the day, the sugar and fruit

And honey, and oil and spice,

Thickly and richly dripping along

Towards sublime oblivion,

Where every echoing chant I’ve heard,

And every song of bird and beast

In every trunk of tree embraced,

In winds that moan from dusk to dawn

Through valleys brimming with wonderous tale

And incense heavy and hot and hard,

Swelling and swelling till all becomes

The mountains highest in all the world,

The glooms and glories of rarer airs there

Where senses a-spire to zeniths reach,

Where diamonds and rubies, brilliant, compete

With newborn leaves bedewed and sweet,

Whereupon the peaks, they trembling melt

To puddles of gentlest, pliable clay,

In every which pond a pebble is dropped.

And Ages release their pent-up passion.

The ripples expand to waves so vast,

Upturn the when and where of fact.

Sinuous, co-sinuous, tangential forms,

Abstractions engirdling the timeless space

Undulate free and far and wide,

Reflecting casements painted bright

Of domes of pleasure round and round-

Bubbles flashing visions immortal.

The traceries tighten- and wits return

To meadows of wildest magic,

And heaths of every billowing grass,

And forests wet with rain.

Fertile, full of invisible bloom,

Molten folds of lava guard

Measureless caverns, chasms unearthed

Seething with fountains of youth.

And from that point,

From within the undergrowth,

The infinite rolling, voluptuous roads

To Worlds yet still untravelled.

It is you, it is all you, Siren Queen.

The poetry of Earth is you.

The chariot is ready, the signs have been.

The skies beckon to you.

Come with me.

- 11.21