Lal Dĕd Goes Riding
The following two verses–a question and its answer–are excerpted from I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd. This collection of Lalla’s poems–translated beautifully by Ranjit Hoskote–is one of my favorites: for its informative and insight notes, as much as for the poems themselves.
78
Shiva’s the horse and Vishnu’s the saddle,
Brahma’s cheering at the stirrup.
Only the yogi, artful in breath and posture,
can say which god shall mount and ride this horse.
79
He who strikes the Unstruck Sound,
calls space his body and emptiness his home,
who has neither name nor colour nor family nor form,
who, meditating on Himself, is both Source and Sound,
is the god who shall mount and ride this horse.
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