Poems Of India - XV

Outside city limits
a temple.
In the temple, look,
a hermit woman.

In the woman's hand
a needle,
at needle's end
the fourteen worlds.

0 Lord of Caves,
I saw an ant
devour whole
the woman, the needle,
the fourteen worlds.*

*The city-limits symbolize the physical limits of the body. The temple, the inner mental form. The power of knowledge, is the hermit-woman, holding the mind (needle) on which are balanced the fourteen worlds. When the great enlightenment begins (the ant), it devours all these distinctions.

-- ALLAMA PRABHU [Translated by A. K. Ramanujan in the book - Speaking of Siva]