The Great Vigil

We finally met in the obsidian truth of the mural                                              i was blessedly crazed
in golden light

Murmurs of wild gods like old persian poetry 
mingled with the sensuous indian rose incense smoke

Spreading heavily in precious prana around us

Around myself and the child

A brass nilavilaku; a Kerala oil lamp, was alit sacred  

A ceremony to adore a Beloved goddess

Everything around us was at once normal

and mysterious.

The air seemed exotic and yet it is the very breath that carries you and i

Beside me sat a nine year old Sumerian goddess of her ancestry

With trinkets around her neck and on the parting of her hair

With watercolour cake dust,                                                      borrowed from starsongs and phoenixes, smeared upon her face and as eyeshadow

Like a lithe Bhakti poet of      paint                                                                    

cosmic dancing                                                                                     she began stroking poems of the small gods upon the awaiting wall.

The wall breathed differently like a crucible returning a painting to life

This slow burning ritual like a candle sprightly kindled    Beckoning me to its otherworldly glow like a moth               i felt anointed enough

Anointed enough to weave spirits upon the longing canvas with my bronze skinned fingers and palms

Time did not bully us anymore                                                  

In fact, its elemental nature became experiential

We became children who must chase lost songs.

We became the earth.

The earth became us.

Everything contained in us was slowly revealed                                  

Contained in everything were we

The colours kept telling stories with the earth turning in it.

Ablution sun love was met in the belly of her carnelian            

Azure portals in fluids and aventurine lands were thus cradled                                                

several riverine skies                                                                                    a couple of dandelion fluff moons                                         
in an almost frescoed world upon this wall

Something began to stir, shift and awaken

These days an emoticon i belovedly use is a blue tea rain soaked green umbrella                                                           to convey the present temperament of a Kochi sky

For a pilgrim of colours                                                          in this late evening, the sky brought out the Adambhara lapis lazuli of the oceans above to celebrate its becoming                                                                 

And dangling from its grey karkoondhal; the malayalee serpentine coiled wealthly coconut scented tresses, 

is an Amethyst piece of the moon that sheds its shadow to begin anew                                                   

in the island of her amniotic sac

Along with the Midsummer’s Mazha; the quintessential Malayalam rain                                                                                                       the kochi sky wailed like a banshee                                                       

Ergo, liberating itself in its divine tears

Mazha

And here i am

Beholding it all –

the colour of petrichor                                                                         

the song of scattered incense smoke                                                 

the many secret lectures around me- 

Consecrating the mural with my trembled coursing tears

I’ve been seen                                                                            is it not a blessing?                                                                       i did not seek                                                                                                          and yet we met                                                                                           we met in the obsidian truth of the mural                                                             

i was blessedly crazed                                                                                            

because                                                                                                                             I felt the tug of the golden umbilical cord

What does it take for us to remember the Great Memory?                                                                                            When will we sense the hundred throbbing inheritances around us?

And while the small Sumerian goddess; kneeling beside me in prayer

spoken in tongues of colours                                                                        Truthtelling her way to paint                                                                             

And while everything was held between grace and gratitude                                                                                        kneeling before the wall painting                                                                   

as if in an act of libation                                                                                       i rove, i see                                                                                            Truth is in the colours

Crowned with small gods whispering  from all the cardinal directions                                                                             

i was made not only of human breath and animal skin 
               

i am just as much made of flower kissed songs that will be lost if never paid love

And alchemical verses of long forgotten deities of antiquity

                                                                                

Will i ever comprehend the colour of my offering?                                          Or was i merely dreamt myself?  

What can i give back to myself these days?     

Only this i see for now                                                                                                                                                               The Great Vigil becomes the only truth i can submit to at the altar of my silence.