Mother Ganga's Embrace

by Mukesh Williams

At dawn a naked ascetic

Rubs cow dung ash

On his starved body,

And immerses himself

In the chill waters

Of ancestral memory.

His slag-covered relic

Of a body rises and

His blue lips cogitate

On the sound of Om,

His spirit wanders

In the dark distance.

The Gangotri glacier

Beckons his gnostic faith

And the distracting ephemera

Astounds his senses

Reminding him of his sojourn

And what he has left behind.

So he gives up in despair

And returns to the lower reaches

Of Mother Ganga,

Immerses himself in its waters

And finds deliverance

In her deific embrace!

The mighty Ganga rises in the Gangotri glacier and then passes through the fertile region of the Doab, spreads through the impenetrable Sunderban swamps before it enters the sea into the Bay of Bengal. To know the Ganga is to know the universe. It is to know thyself.

03-Feb-2012

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