No mountain gladdens the surging of cypresses and deodars,

But a black tail wags when the enormous sky is set in blaze.

Sometimes in that onrush of night is glimpsed the zodiac eye,

Sometimes our will leaps out even as sleep would be a storm,

Sometimes enlarges into early morn the twinkling of the stars.

There is no wind-flutter although the marigolds are a-bloom,

There are no gods beyond a certain hierarchy of the High.

Then would these worlds glow, a purple lava gushing from a cave,

And in the dazzlement of that sacrificial flight the song is born:

“I am the unspanned wonder of the far-off Invisible’s spaces,

And awake in a dream of solitude my timeless flames are gathered.

O the daring into a million mouths of the monster of Death!

I am the spark-burst of Truth whirling in a dance of ecstasy,

I am the incomprehensible cypher, I am the unexplored pupil,

I am the dimensionless marvel of the undefined Now and Here;

Compacted into stupendous hush of the mysterious Infinite,

Burn the suns of my joy and the shining path of life is laid;

I am the substance electric a-quiver in a bowl of anti-mass,

And the wave-particle’s phenomenality filling the ether,

And the secret idea-seed cast into the bosom of a verdant bliss.

I hear the primal phonon’s hum deep in the superconscient womb:

Outcurving into the region of Sound I chant the glory of the Name,

Incurving I am the Silence poised on wings of eternal seeing;

I’ve become a Bird of Fire zooming on breath of my own Shadow.”

RY Deshpande

30 June 1982    

Phonon: particle-aspect of sound-energy