Shabda

Adau Bhagavan shabda rasahi: 'In the beginning the Lord
created the universe through a stream of sound.' ~Vedic text

You know the sound of blood, that drum.

You know the sound of breathing out,

that river of diamonds.

And the sound of your mind
trying to make music out of shattered

mirrors and windows.

But have you heard the sound of Being

as it overflows the rim of the grail?

Not the feeble background hum
of the first moment,
not an echo, nor an idea.
I see you before you were born
floating through a pit, a silent hollow,
tethered by the umbilicus
to what, to whom you cannot know.

But you would like to know, wouldn't you?

So you reach out a warm finger
and swirl it round the singing bowl
of Andromeda, careful not to spill
its bright worlds.

You play the glass harmonium 

of all the galaxies until
the amniotic fluid of the universe

trembles like an unstruck carillon,

utterly inaudible
because it resonates in emptiness.

No, that is not the sound of Being.

You must get down and get born to hear it
gushing like a sudden wound,
tearing the veil of the continuum
in the silence of the void,
a terrible ecstatic cry of
"Kali Ma! O Kali Ma!"
This is the ineluctable chime.
This is the sound of Being,

the breathless kiss of consciousness

upon your own body of stars.

NASA photo, Andromeda galaxy