Kali

 

The most beautiful form of Kali

is whatever you are resisting.

The most beautiful face of Kali

is whomever you are judging
right now.

Until this moment your words
were shadows of what you meant,

hand-me-down dominions,

their titles overheard in the gossip

of unfriended angels.

Now you reinvent the language

to describe a terrible realm

of embodied goddesses,
deeper than sadness, deeper than sin,
the furrows they have fallen in.

First, you abandon belief.

Then, you relinquish the believer.

A convulsion of longing

keens the silence of your infinite loss,

the sign of perfect grieving,

ululation of darkness,

your new name for light.

Your mouth is the womb of Torah.

Vedas emanate from your eyes,

black hieroglyphs of Tantra 

inscribed with ink of tears.

You speak a Logos of entangled galaxies.

Your name is Legion,

flowing from your lips on serpent vines,

your groin a cauldron of melted rubies,

topaz wine distilled

from the juice of unsolved koans.

Abba Philoman of Sinai

pronounced this apothegm

to a seeker from Rome

who, upon hearing it, fled back

to the city and worshiped Caesar:

"Surely the Word of the Lord

creates you

because it is a Word

that you create

with the breath of surrender."