Pilgrims, Prayers, Mumbai Cart-Man

Pilgrims

As pilgrims let’s uncover

fiercest beauty, and notice

God in dandelion and buttercup.

Let’s aspire to describe a rose

unfolding in our heart. Let’s sense

the movement of day-blind stars

making eternal journeys in the dark.

And when we die, let’s know

we are as snowflakes

melting in the sun.

Prayers

Where like-minds link, 

and from which

heavenly harmonies radiate, 

bliss extends 

to encompass the world.

No barriers stall

the development of

radiance.

It is a gossamer

finer than atoms. It is

a rhapsody formed

of star light.

Mumbai Cart-Man

I slog my cart before traffic begins, before

squealing pigs squabble in markets, before

sun rises in smog in candy-floss skies.

I struggle while Mumbai awakens in monsoon mud,

and fish-maids, having completed

boning and scaling, return to hovel and shack.

I am rags in ragas and rough talking, not Cambridge

hounds out punting. I am, like pigs, not in starch,

but stumbling in stench.

I have wrestled with a Yoga of clemency, realizing

I am the subject, and buckled under self-loathing.

This too is indulgence.

There is no escaping the puke of piety! In harsh streets

God meets rabble and riches. This is only self

meeting self. When this happens,

what glory? He is manifesting

in everything equally. He is the word before the world,

before all vagaries of differentiation.

By Misha Norland