Krishna Lila

It is not through mathematics
that we learn to hear the music
of the spheres,
but by whirling as they do.
Let the rotation of angles
in Krishna's sky-stained body
describe a geometry of playfulness
in fractals of lila,
the calculus of his ankle bells,
the whimsical trigonometry of elbows.
Note the inclination of those wrists,
a finger's curve approaching
the asymptote of the flute,
the littlest one angled upward
as if holding the stars in a teaspoon.
The resonance comes from breathing
through black holes
in a reed of escaping bliss,
the entropy of a sigh.
Who can balance such equations?
Interstices of calf and thigh,
the ratio of tilted hips
to the slant of his glance,
the distance from heart to smile
in proportion to the length 

of an inhalation,
those lips like the red shift
in the vector of longing.
Let the slope of his neck
and the tilt of his peacock feathered crown
be your golden mean,
and your yearning the invisible limit
to the curve of his crimson smile.
You need to solve these equations, but how?
Build cathedrals out of stillness.
Let the quotient of a sigh
divided by a sudden inhalation
be the proportion of your longing
and fulfillment
as jasmine releases its sweetness,
arousing the Om-hum of honeybees
in a blossoming kunj.
The broken symmetry of silence
is the sound of the Veda
when you whisper your lover's
secret name.
Shyama dances in the garden
and the logarithms of rasa-lila
multiply the forms of the cow-herd boy
until each Gopi's heart has One. 

Bewilderment is the final science.
Let Radha's confusion expand
like a peacock's tail in the hologram
of your chest.
This is the moonlit algebra 

your nakedness understands,
the pavonine spiral of Gopal.
Only through this quotient of
delight and pain,
the reed flute hollowed
to the breath of God,
will you ever conceive how
intricately the cosmos
entangles its vastness
in your body.

NOTE: The Greeks, Neo-Platonists, Medieval alchemists, and artists like Leonardo all believed that the mathematical proportions of the human form were divine. They tried to capture these divine ratios, "circling the square" through the formula called the Golden Mean. We can see this in works such as the Mona Lisa. In the Bhakti tradition of India, this knowledge is not through the study of mathematical symmetries, but through the divine chaos of Krishna's sheer playfulness, the lilas of the mystical body of the Lord of the Dance.