A friend of mine read this to me out loud last night and I thought it was stirring enough to share here. Perhaps anyone who is familiar with these ideas might care to comment, as I have no knowledge in this area. However, I enjoyed the imagery.

Brahma, Visnu, Siva
by Rabindranath Tagore, 1883

In a world-less timeless lightless great emptiness
              Four-faced BRAHMA broods.
Of a sudden a sea of joy surges through his heart --
              The ur-god opens his eyes.

              Speech from four mouths
              Speeds to each quarter.
              Through infinite dark,
              Through limitless sky,
              Like a growing sea-storm,
              Like hope never sated,
              His Word starts to move.

Stirred by joy, his breathing quickens,
              His eight eyes quiver with flame.
His fire-matted hair sweeps the horizon,
              Bright as a million suns.

              From the towering source of the world
                            In a thousand streams
              Cascades the primeval blazing fountain,
                            Fragmenting silence,
                            Splitting its stone heart.

              In a universe rampant
              With new life exhalant,
              With new life exultant,
              In a borderless sky
              VISNU spreads wide
              His four-handed blessing.

              He raises his conch
              And all things quake
              At its booming sound.

              The frenzy dies down,
              The furnace expires,
              The planets douse
              Their flames with tears.

              The world's Divine Poet
              Constructs its history,
              From wild cosmic song
              Its epic is formed.

              Stars in their orbits,
              Moon sun and planets --
              He binds with his mace
              All things to Law,
              Imposes the discipline
              Of metre and rhyme.

              In the Manasa depths
              VISNU watches --
              Beauties arise
              From the light of lotuses.

              Laksmi strews smiles --
              Clouds show a rainbow,
              Gardens show flowers.

              The roar of Creation
              Resolves into music.

              Softness hides rigour,
              Forms cover power.

Age after age after age is slave to a mighty rhythm --
              At last the world-frame
              Tires in its body,
              Sleep in its eyes
              Slackens its structure,
              Diffuses its energy.

              From the heart of all matter
              Comes the anguished cry --
              "Wake,wake, great SIVA,
              Our body grows weary
              Of its law-fixed path,
              Give us new form.

              Sing our destruction,
              That we gain new life."

              The great god awakes,
              His three eyes open,
              He surveys all horizons.

He lifts his bow, his fell pinaka,
              He pounds the world with his tread.
From first things to last it trembles and shakes
              And shudders.

The bonds of nature are ripped.

The sky is rocked by the roar
Of a wave of ecstatic release.

              An inferno soars --
              The pyre of the universe.

Shattered sun and moon, smashed stars and planets
              Rain down from all angles,
              A blackness of particles
              To be swallowed by flame,
              Absorbed in an instant.

              At the start of Creation
              There was dark without origin,
              At the breaking of Creation
              There is fire without end.

In an all-pervading sky-engulfing sea of burning
              SIVA shuts his three eyes.
              He begins his great trance.

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What a pleasure his company must have been....