Who Can Say (text of poem)

Since I have my book with me there is another poem I wish to share. It is about the creation of the world.

 

“WHO CAN SAY WHENCE IT ALL CAME, AND HOW CREATION HAPPENED?”

(from the ‘Rig Veda’, X, 129)

(I found it in “Essential Sacred Writings”)

 

1.Then [in the beginning] even nothingness was not, nor existence.

   There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.

   What Covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?

   Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?

2. Then there were neither death nor immortality,

    nor was there then the torch of night and day.

    The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.

    There was that one then, and there was no other.

3. At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.

    All this was only un-illuminated water.

    That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,

    Arose at last, born of the power of heat.

4. In the beginning desire descended on it –

    That was the primal seed, born of the mind.

    The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom

    know that which is, is kin to that which is not.

5. And they have stretched their cord across the void

    and know what was above and what below.

    Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.

    Below was strength and over it was impulse.

6. But, after all, who knows, and who can say

    whence it all came, and how creation happened?

    The gods themselves are later then creation,

    So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

7. Whence all creation had its origin,

    he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,

    he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

    he knows – or maybe even he does not know.

 

[The “then’ at the beginning of the stanzas could be read.. In the beginning it would carry the same meaning of the word]

[In the third line of the second stanza ‘that one’ is tad ekam, or ‘that one’ who ‘breaths with out air’. The ‘self-sustaining’ is Svadha or the energy, intrinsic power which makes self-generation possible (life)]

[In the middle of the third stanza “Un-illuminated water.” Is two words, Salila or fluid and apraketa or indistinguishable]

[At the end of the third stanza “heat” is the Tapas, an archaic word which also defines those human austerities or techniques which, like this cosmic hear, generate power.]

[in stanza four the “is kin to” is the word bandhu which is also translated as bond]