India

by Anna Ruiz

Perhaps it is just because
I am India herself
I have never visited her jungle temples
though I have felt her monsoon torrents in
my awakening kundalini,
I have dissolved in her saffron and curry
I have been bathed in the aroma of sandalwood and black narcissus
drifting... into my awareness
I have lived in her rooms of opium—
silently bewildered
as the starry night,
all but forgotten
but for the sake of Love
and I have danced in her colours
I have danced with bells and cymbals
and veils,
oh these colours of India,
these glorious colours of teeming life and untold stories
hovering with
the last breaths of the dying,
and I have prayed,
oh, how I have prayed,
chanting your name,
My Beloved,

I have purified myself on the pyre
of dissolution and now,
empty and naked of all that could
be in our way, even this last veil
of Poetry,

like the flesh of words in Water,

I come to you.