Poems Of India - X

To the utterly at-one with Shiva
there's no dawn,
no new moon,
no noonday,
nor equinoxes,
nor sunsets,
nor full moons;

his front yard
is the true Benares,

O Ramanatha.

-- DĒVARA DĀSIMAYYA [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]

A rejection of ritualism, of sacred days and of sacred months and of scared places.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLIX

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

This is the forty-ninth quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat and among one of the few quatrains that are fairly clear what they want convey. The poet says in this chessboard of night and day, where humans are mere pawns in the hands of destiny. Destiny decides and the pawns move hither and thither. Not by their own gumption, but on the vagaries of what fate and destiny makes of them. In this game, they slay and checkmate but ultimately all the pieces one by one go back to the box where they lay. Destiny controls all of them, makes them do things and ultimately gets the better of them.