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Leaping Carp – Poetry by Jayanta

Going Back

Posted on May 22, 2022May 22, 2022 by Jayanta
I walked through downtown Brooklyn streets, in these days converted into upscale homes, looking for the site of my inspiration fifty years earlier. It was an eerie moment, finding the place of so much excitement but also turmoil in my life. It had existed in memory as a collection of strong experiences, waiting for the time they would have a place in my life again.

These universes are understood to be floating in the air that Mahā-Viṣṇu exhales. They are like atomic particles that float in sunshine and pass through the holes of a screen. All these universes are thus created by the exhalation of Mahā-Viṣṇu, and when Mahā-Viṣṇu inhales, they re-enter His body. The unlimited opulences of Mahā-Viṣṇu are completely beyond material conception. Chaitanya-caritamrta, Madhya 20.279-80 Translation of Srila Prabhupada

Every temple is a holy site, a dham, it is said.
The Brooklyn Radha Krishna temple,
  Henry Street and Kane,
  in some ways it is gone,
  its Deities and congregation moved a half-mile away
  and its rooms converted into apartments for the young and rich.
But it remains a vortex, at the center of swirling memory,
   claiming pieces and moments of the inner world I thought was mine.

Driving by on the city highway,
   I always glance that way,
   and the brownstone area is still
   awash in incense and leaping devotees
   and it is always summer in hot New York streets.

When cold breezes come through open windows
  wherever I am, 
  I recall the temple in winter,
  heavy wool socks and longjohns under dhotis,
  and it is always a dark morning,
  streets sunless with their frozen trash.

Still I hear it,
  before dawn 
  the young golden boy waving his brass bell,
  past every cot and blanket.
  A kid born there and capable of delivering wisdom,
 chiding and warning - 
 “Sleep is ignorance.”

But such things are not lost, 
   and we are permitted to remember our dreams
   until they exist again.



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