Harish Meenashru


from "Narratives of Creation"

This is about the time
when there was no ant
and no earth.

The ant that was not bit the earth that was not.
there was a swelling on the earth

It bit the mountain
and a brook burst out.

The ant bit the water
the navel of water was perturbed,
there bloomed up a lotus.

The ant bit the lotus.
The fragrance asleep in its fold got awaked.
The fragrance took a few steps.
They were called wind.

The ant bit the wind.
Annoyed, it started hissing and blowing in a circle - the resonating Shunya
tensely stretched in all ten directions became the covering -the sky.

The ant bit the sky,
there was a red sore on the sky -
The light of its burning got spread everywhere.

The ant bit the light,
Within no time there erupted a shadow devoid of body - the colour of inversion.

The ant bit the shadow,
From its toe there emerged a poet sans prosody.

On biting the poet
from his red swollen lips and red burnt tongue
there appeared (hund)reds of languages.
Now the ant that was not became noAnt in the true sense,
absolutely unoccupied -
leaving the task of biting to language .

Thus
began the Creation of the Universe.

Translation: Dr. Piyush Joshi and Dr. Rajendrasinh Jadeja
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