Journey to Kāmākhyā

Having wept during the long, dark nights
Listened intently and recited the 1,000 sacred names,
Even named the 10,000 things,
Recited the formula 150,000 times
Still the end of desire,
The unending joy
I have not found.

So now each deliberate yet tentative step
Must take me
Across the jungle valley, up the steep hills
Must lead me
To where Her vulva fell,
When the mad dancer
Carrying the remains of Her charred, lifeless body
Nearly brought our world to its end,
To the source of eternal infatuation
Shimmering, youthful beauty that
Cannot fade.
To where greater instinct leads us finally
After everything else falls away.
Having repeatedly and incessantly missed
    the true object of desire
Repeatedly been tied ever more deeply to the
    churning wheel
Having made every mistake possible, 
Clouded by delusions
Those steps must lead me
To the dark, cleft rocks – the petrified remains.

Desire can be eternal delight, can take us
    beyond the boundaries of this life
If Her grace enters us
If Her light fills our heart, clears our mind
So I must go to where the young, perpetual
    virgin resides
To lay my head before the primordial yoni
Complete the surrender
To leave my karmas and inclinations
    my chart of accounts, education, race, country and creed
Behind
And let the thousands words I have heard and read and spoken
More than a thousand times
Lead me to that perfect silence, the space between thoughts
The great wheel’s hesitation
Letting the joy from the deepest core inside me
Flood my being
With Her waves of bliss.

Kāmākhyā Temple, Guwahati, Inida

When I Shall Be In India

When I shall be in the India, truly be in India
The Great Mother who fills the void, throws Her children
      to its gate,
Will have carried me across the skies, blessed my forehead,
Placed my feet on sacred ground.

The phallus of Her lover shall appear before me, shall
      anoint alternately
In pure beams of white, red, blue, yellow,
      orange , green
Light -- reaching to the core of Her womb
Beyond the pale, collective visions of man
And, I will be bathed in bliss.

When I shall be in India, be really in India
Women will cease to be an object, frustration, exaggerated,
     illusory, fascinating goal.
Will become a vessel, vehicle, concrete, tangible, accessible,
      real
And the great incest will have been committed, fulfilled
Restoring the essential mystery of life, death.
The doors to the sacred world will be open, visible,
     unmistakable.
Like the Fool, I shall step of the precipice
And Her limbs transport me wherever my heart seeks to go.
Life, death, will possess little meaning
Marking only entries and exits
In time that never ends.

When I shall be in India
The flesh lost in the soul's journey,
The blood skin, bile, muscle, phlegm, tissues of uncountable kind
That falling reduced me to skeleton form
Will regenerate--
Be new, translucent, not subject to decay.
Old flesh will have returned to the earth, burned
     and offered to the sky
And, I shall stand at my native place
Seeing it for the very first time.
Then I shall be in India, truly be in India.

Near the only spot where the Sarasvatī River emerges; a few miles from the Ambikā Temple in Gujarat.

India, My Love

Is the moon held in early
  summer evening's sky
The same moon, the very same moon
I viewed from the magic streets
  of Simla?
Same moon that hung in
November's sky,
Seemed painted, colors vivid,
  white, gray, tinted yellow
Was full, clear, terribly close.
The same moon five years removed,
Seen how many thousand miles away?

India, when I first saw you--
Swarming masses at Bombay's airport,
Farmers, workers, huts surrounding the
  fields,
Misty-clouded monsoonal rains
Pouring, halting, hanging
In the air--
I was bathed in joy.
Filled with excitement, 
I met your bustling masses,
Crowded customs, money-changing
  hawkers,
Poor peons selling cokes
  to earn five paise.
I was happy then--
The airport was drab, disgusting,
But my eyes saw only an
  unknown beauty, mystery,
Of unknown strangers, endless
    new sensations.

On the flight to Delhi I
  saw from the skies
Your vast Gujarat, Maharashtra states.
The wind swirled the small craft
  so badly
I thought I would die--
I accepted it in a moment,
My death sure to cause
  my soul
To be reborn your native son
I remember the nights,
Nights of summer, nights of fall,
Night chilled to freezing,
Nights overheated to exasperation.
The journeys through the darkness to
Simla, to Bhopal, to Dehra Dun,
To my soul.

You do not treat your visitors
  well, India.
You give them no luxury, no dearth
  of endless red-tape, rules,
  questions.
But I was fixated by you,
In love with you.
And, like a fascinated courter,
Tolerance was unneeded,
Each foolish quirk, each
  strange incident
Only bound me to your
  ever deepening spell.

The faces of your children
  still come to me in the night,
  call to me to return.
The simple joy of friendship,
  generous affection,
Ease of companionship,
Rapture of hospitality--
The perfection of my country's
  never learned art.
My dreams never tire of returning me
  in search of
Five year staled friendships--
And the agony of separation
Grips at my heart,
Pulls me into melancholic states.

How I long to touch your soil,
Let the dust settle on my skin.
How, to see your mornings, twilights,
  nights.
Long to be with friends,
Travel to unheard places,
Feel your breeze,
Caress your thighs,
Sleep at your bosom.

You are the magic lover,
Seduced, ingested, then spit me out
Only for my love to grow,
The separation engulf any
  thought of happiness
Without your ground
beneath my feet.

Oh, India!
India, my love,
When shall I see you?
When shall I touch you once more? 

Kāmākhyā Temple, Guwahati, Assam.

The Fisher King

I wait
Troubled by deadening pain
From that wound
Robbing all grace from life,
Making all I view cold, hard, barren.
I wait
While the throbbing, endless throbbing in the loins
Makes even the prospect of union a misery,
Causing rain to be held in the sky, holding green chutes beneath the surface of
the soil.
These many years I have waited
Unable to plow the land,
Despondent, desperate, despoiled, deadened - 

I wait
The coming of the youth
Excellent, spontaneous
Driven by the daemon,
Who will span the waters
Ride over the bridge
Bear witness to the effulgence of the cup,
Grasp the holy vision
Contained by it and care.

So many
Have stumbled upon the vastness
But failed to ask the question
Enjoying a moment’s exhilaration, triumph
They assumed all knowing
Was merely observing, experiencing
Not the delicate exercise of caring,
Placing each and every being into the heart,
Practicing patience, compassion, and loving-kindness.

I wait
My own wisdom tempered, contained
By the joyless monotony
Of a routine I cannot break,
Until he comes – the Fool.

Perceval Meets the Fisher King

Quest

Wind of the same path? Sea of the same water?
In those days I wandered in the shrouded mists, 
    among the heather-laden, green, low-hanging
    hills,
Wrapped as I was with less than a fur shirt,
I was not cold
And, when I descended
I came upon the gameboard vale, recognized the
    many familiar mansions, many ancient castles.

Wind of the same path? Sea of the same water?
When did the quest begin?
I knew the caers I had entered,
Vaguely knew their sequence, the progression
     danced long ago
That lead me to the immortal point.
I did not ask, I did not know.

Wind of the same path? Sea of the same water?
I have wandered endlessly since being cast out.
I did not ask, I did not know.
And when the fleeting moment's union ended
I stood in heather mists destined to do it
    all again.

Wind of the same path? Sea of the same water?
The endless longing, pothos longing, bittersweet
    longing,
Leads me again on the fool's path.
Do I recognize the way?
Do I hear the wounded king?
This time I shall ask, this time I shall know.

Perceval sees the Grail Procession

Give Me A Love

GIVE ME A LOVE

Give me a love who will lie with me on green
    amidst the silent sounds of forest, shadows veiling
    and revealing, walls of trees, ceiling of azure sky,
Who will couple amidst the deer, lion, squirrels,
Along the river, in the clump, on the hill where
    green is dominant mixed with a thousand shades of brown.

Who will lie unashamed, naked, among the ancient tree
     spirits,
Whose act of love urges the vines to grow, limbs of trees
      extend, green fuses ignite,
Change the season to eternal spring.

Give me a love who will gently caress my phallus, mark
    of me
Between careful fingers, delicate lips
And raise the serpent from his coil
To an ornament of bliss -- 
That will lie hidden in unknown  places, lie amidst crowds,
lie any spot convenient
Making sorrowful Pan play the magic flute
Uniting the soul.

Give me a love both gentle yet bold
With powerful vices for thighs, full mountains for breasts,
Wide, round hips that complete the cycle.
Make her the boat, her vulva the vessel
That carries me to the other world
I can not reach.

Give me a love with exquisite sentiments,
Darting, sensuous eyes, quick smile
Who merges gentility with  force, compassion with
    pleasure.
Removing the pain from my head, sorrow from shoulders,
Unties the knots in my loin,
Who worships the phallus,
Freeing me to worship the womb
Give me a love who will lie with me on green.

Mātāngī's Passion

The Beloved is dressed in a sari of red, red rose
Her skin so dark it nearly is blue.
Her strong black, curly, tumbling, thick hair streaming down from Her crown
    in a waterfall’s torrent, rushes to Her heart shaped bottom.
She has a thin waist, full wide hips, taut back
Laboring to support the weight of full, high breasts that
Rise as mountains flowing with desire, bursting through the red, red cloth
   of Her red, red sari
Draped coquettishly around Her elegant, rounded shoulders.
Her lips are full, ruby red and pursed
Eyes wide and deep, black as the moonless sky, 
Lashes emitting arrows of the God of Love,
With a gaze that is coy, luscious, alluring.
Nose thin and delicate, 
She wears a string of translucent pearls around Her neck,
Her earlobes adorned with the Sun and the Moon.
The Beloved sits holding a vina
Shows fine hands with long fingers, 
Wrists with shimmering silver bangles. 
She drinks heavily, gazing passionately,
Intoxicated by the immortal potion.
She plucks Her strings, sings a siren’s song
That excites and vibrates every cell in Her lover’s body,
And stirs the resting, hesitant universe to its next wave of bliss.

Om Hrīm Klīm Hum Matangaye Phat Svāha

Mātāngī - Kālī Temple, Shimla, HP, India

There Is An Immensity In Me

There is an immensity in me
It is huge, wide, deep and full
It is so grand, awesome
That when it seizes me
My spine shakes and trembles.

It is a wonder, it is full of bliss, has
    endless beauty
It lights the way.
It makes me rich, silly with joy
Spontaneous, giddy
The immensity in me.

It was there at my birth
There when I started school,
It was there on the ball fields of my youth
Winning or losing at some game
There in classrooms, learning catechisms, even in conflicts
In the warmest summers and rain-filled winters, 
In the grace of springs and the golden light of falls
There even in my darkest desperate moments,
    filled with shame and doubt.
That immensity in me
Would not fail me,
Would not release me,
Held tight its grip.

The immensity is the gift of poesy, gift of vision
Gift of caring and compassion
It knows no beginning,
Will have no end.

There is immensity in you
It is an overwhelming fountain
    gushing joy
That cleanses and transforms
And connects to the Holy People,
    the Great Ones
Whether you are Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian or
    of a religion so close and compelling it needs no
    books or titles.
This immensity was with you when you were born.
It cannot be other
No matter how you were born, where you were born,
     to whom or why
The immensity is you.

Ah, we have great gaps in the world, filled with hatreds
    and misunderstandings,  terrible woundings, horrible slaughters.
But the immensity is not shaken, does not shrink away
It claims us, drives us back into to life
To try again.

There is immensity in me – 
It is greater and deeper and more wonderful
Than I can say.
That immensity in you is the same
Though different of race, speech, nation, sex, age, color, character, talent
WE ARE NOT – WE ARE NOT
Not to the immensity in me
Not to the immensity in you
Not to the immensity.
Oh, the immensity! 

To SSDD

“Wisdom is given as a gift  to the wise”

So I turn to you
A spectre from the distant past
Or a living presence in the subtle realm?
Magician, priestess, writer, teacher, actress, saint
Dare I call upon you?
Are those furtive smiles breaking through in my moments of deep silence
Rising from wish fulfillment
Or do they mean you are near and close?

Ah, to be in the fin de siècle, that age of great women
Who through their magic, art and practice
Began to turn the terrible wheel of the deadened western world, the wasteland
Back to the feminine source.
Turned the legacy of the Roman Church’s slaughter of the Languedoc, the
       Inquisition’s torture of innocents,
The murderous burnings, drownings, hangings over more than a hundred
       generations of women healers and saints
For practicing ancient crafts.
Turned all this to the descent of spirit
That is yet still overflowing
If we just lift up and open our arms,
Still our minds
Make ourselves empty
Surrender to the wisdom of nature.
In the age of darkest repression, these women
Spoke once more from the sacred wells.

Your great beauty survives
Not just hinted in aging, tinted photos and line drawings
But as inspiration to those who seek,
A vital, palpable presence for those
Who long for the sacred chants and incantations,
The magical transmutations that align the spirit and the body.
Do I hear that resonant, commanding voice at the very edge of vibration?
That somehow calls me, somehow causes me to remember
What I once knew long before this birth but have since forgotten.
Calls to all of us in the age of greatest danger, greatest betrayal of our
      Mother to be still and let love flow.

New music from old words, old words restored to meaning, 
Old meanings recalled once more.
Do I sense the flowing of the shekinah into the vessel?
Is that vessel before me now?
Yes, The Priestess returns bearing the Grail. 

FLORENCE FARR, New York 1907