Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5

 

 

SCENE l: TRANSCENDENCE

 

SHE                             Fire and fire and fire and fire!

Unnameable incandescence,

towards which the universe bends

even as a giant banyan tree

with its million branches

churning the interstellar milk

with their golden scourges,

its radiant suns

and its black suns, fruits of darkness.

It bends,

all its rays veering towards their source

and its fruits fall into the Light.

 

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But over there, still are burning

thousands of suns for the Festival.

Given back to me,

one with me!

The banyan tree vanished, burnt down,

swallowed up into this I

that suffers nothing but itself.

I am the Delight of my Delight,

the Truth of my Being,

the Absolute of my immutable Wholeness.

I am the One,

I am the Unadored.

But the Delight of my Delight

is here with its very self.

It breaks the virtue of its self-identity.

It stands face to face with itself.

For the Delight of My Delight

is He my Beloved.

 

Dance of the Mirror

 

So does all begin at each instant.

 

SCENE 2: THE SERPENT OF THE INFINITE

 

HE                               Here I am back again,

Absolute, Solitary,

rich with the innumerable unrollings of the Being.

 

Here is the end

and the beginning of the world,

here I clasp myself in an eternal ecstasy.

One and Two!

O infinite abyss!

 

My Source, my Target,

my Delight awaiting me.

 

SHE                             My Delight come back to me.

 

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HE                               The Other unites with Other.

SHE                             The Same with Same.

 

What a perfume surrounds you!

Ocean, forest, gardens of the Earth

sing in your flowing hair.

 

HE                               They dance in the hollow of your shoulders;

and all the multitude of creatures

and the glorified man.

 

SHE                             O the one all, the one Self

peopled with my first and eternal wholeness,

as with undying stars,    .

I am mirrored everywhere in myself,

in the very cells, the atoms.

 

The Dance of Fulfiment

 

HE                               Nothing ever goes out

of my integral Identity.

In it, somewhere

–flake of light, mimosa of dream­ –

the Universe vibrates,

there I dance

multiplied

for the Delight of the Delight,

for the Love of the Love.

 

The Dance of the Eternal Manifestation

 

VOICE                        Who are these two?

Who are these two?

Sun-eyed children!

Sun-eyed children!

 

SCENE 3: THE BECOMING

 

First Tabieau: The Offering

 

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Dance of the Golden Journey

 

HE                               Stars! Stars!

 

SHE                             Stars!

 

HE                               The whole universe is our body.

Our cycles renew it, pass through it

and each one deposits there in secret

its offering.

 

SHE                             Look, how beautiful is the Earth:

a golden fleece at our feet.

 

HE                               She is the obstinate, the rebel;

our body of rock and honey and perfume,

our body of bird,

our body of night, of wrath.

 

SHE                             She is our challenge to the impossible

HE                               If she did not resist us

how could we celebrate the triumphs

of our physical meeting?

 

SHE                             Each time we tread upon it,

She, the obstinate, the rebel

keeps the impress of our steps.

 

HE                               She opens the peerless bosom of her body.

We ride back upon the course of the ages,

down to the inconscient seas

where the fragile ring of life floats;

we cure all shipwrecks,

all suffering, all defeats.

We dive into the abyss of Matter,

we awaken the cell and the atom;

then does the earth vibrate and blaze up

and the universe too around her

who has offered herself to the Delight always and for ever.

 

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SHE                             Child of our mysteries.

Unexampled offering of the eternal Becoming.

 

Second Tableau: The Festival

 

HE-SHE                      Mariner on the unknown gulf-streams

of time and space;

drunk with the silvered air

even as the condor,

above the peaks of snow;

mad with light even as the nova;

stamped with a strange massiveness

as the dwarf star;

red as the nebula;

reddened as the spring

and the cherry;

alone with man

in his canoe

on the ocean immensity;

alone,

and two,

and all;

emerged out of the song of separation and of inconscience;

 

Man and Nature,

Man and Man,

God and God

for the first time,

from the inmost depth of an embodied gaze

contemplate each other.

 

From man to man,

from rock to rock,

from infinity to infinity

–radiant mirror of suns,

incandescent honey of love,

sacred substance of the eternal orgy­ –

the eternal Eye looks at itself.

 

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The holy Symbol

has opened the mystic vein of its heart

and in the tempest of fairyland,

the snow-drift of love and joy and light

came sweetly

by countless ways

to cover with its tranquil robe

the hills and the valleys of the earth.

Out of the depths of the abyss of ages

rises, with its peoples and flocks and forests,

the great migration of the Ecstasy

–He alone, She alone, the One alone

of the eternal Becoming.

 

CURTAIN

 

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