‘There Can Be No Metaphor’

Words

Looking for your light,
I went out:

it was like the sudden dawn
of a million million suns,

a ganglion of lightnings
for my wonder.

O Lord of Caves,
if you are light,
there can be no metaphor.

(Allama Prabhu: A. K. Ramanujan)

To arrange words
In some order
Is not the same thing
As the inner poise
That’s poetry.

The truth of poetry
Is the truth
Of being.
It’s an experience
Of truth.

No ornaments
Survive.
A crucible.
Fire reveals
Only molten
Gold.

Says Tuka
We are here
To reveal.
We do not waste
Words.

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)

Where does one begin with you?
O Lord, you have no opening line.
It’s so hard to get you started.

Everything I tried went wrong.
You’ve used up all my faculties.

What I just said vanished in the sky
And I’ve fallen to the ground again.

Says Tuka, my mind is stunned:
I can’t find a word to say.

(Tukaram: Dilip Chitre)

She Said:
The texts of philosophy may speak
of his colour, his ornaments, his beauty,
his names, his forms...
although they hold aloft
the bright light of lofty knowledge everywhere
they still cannot see
the greatness of my lord.

(Nammalvar: Archana Venkatesan)

A thousand times at least I asked my Guru
to give Nothingness a name.
Then I gave up. What name can you give
to the source from which all names have sprung?

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

Isn’t it funny
That though she’s Mother of the Universe,

we warble
about her lotus-bud breasts
and her eyes more limpid than a doe’s?

And though she has no beginning or end
we hail her as the little girl born
to the Monarch of the Great Mountain?

Hilarious really
all the hyperbole

when she’s beyond it all —
description, explanation,

perception.

(Abhirami Bhattar: Arundhathi Subramaniam)