Poetry 2000

2000
Suhotra Swami

Dear Srila Prabhupada,
Please accept my most humble obeisances at your lotus feet on the glorious occasion of your Vyasa-puja celebration in the year 2000.

Your One Glance Was Enough

“My weakness cohabiting with temptation…”
These words sum up much about my life.
Yes, much even about that first meeting with you:
When (in weakness) I thought myself too unworthy
To share in your presence.
When (in temptation) I thought your awareness
Limited by your form grasped by my limited senses.

Your one glance was enough
To put all that to flight.
Your one glance was enough
To lay bare my heart.
Your one glance was enough
To make me want to serve you
Again and again
Forever.

Mist, a dragon’s breath creeping the fields,
Scatters before the dawning sun.
Night, a shade stalking the forest path,
Recoils before the ascending moon.
But the terrors that leap from mist and night
Are sheltered within a dark behind that dark
That the sun and moon dispel.

Your one glance was enough
To put all that to flight.
Your one glance was enough
To lay bare my heart.
Your one glance was enough
To make me want to serve you
Again and again
Forever.

Your thumbtip, playing across pink rosebud fingerjoints,
Counts the arguments of opposed schools of thought.
My curiosity trembles to know it, but that number
(Whatever it is) is at once erased, a mere cipher,
By a dismissive wave of your hand.
“Krsna is the Absolute Truth,” your voice transmits
Directly into my consciousness.

And so it was, yesterday. Your fiery truth, a spear of the supreme sun,
launched at my heart. Now today the earth, aquarrel with eclipsed minds.
I pray these minds (mine included) may tomorrow shine like the supreme moon
That re-launches the spear of your truth from the catapult of pure reflection
Upon the sweet Lord that Your Divine Grace reveals within the heart.
Srila Prabhupada, you know best that beyond all the noise,
We just want to be loved. But we must learn to love in return.
Wanting love, yet not knowing how to give it, is lust.

Your one glance is enough
To lay bare our hearts.
Your one glance is enough
To make us want to serve you
Again and again
Forever.

Your humble servant,
Suhotra Swami