Man of Peace

A little while back I read a marvellous book : "Shantaram". It was written by Gregory David Roberts, legendary in Australian criminal folklore as being the "Gentleman Bandit" dressed in a three-piece suit with impeccably polite manners whilst robbing at gunpoint. It is an amazing story about his real-life escape from a maximum-security prison in Melbourne and his adventures on the run in India. I will not give away anything of the story but it is beautifully written and ultimately an uplifting book with all of its literary insight and wisdom.

The book is called "Shantaram" because this is a Marathi (a particular Indian dialect) word which means: "Man of Peace". After reading this book I was inspired to do a little research into Hindu culture and mythology. I came across an interesting deity: Kali. Kali is a fierce and terrible looking woman with the bodies of young children hanging from her earlobes and sharp gnashing bloody teeth. She is in this a personification of death and destruction. Kali also has an (antithetical) iconographical aspect of beauty and motherly love, of a powerful sexual and natural essence. This inspired another poem.

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Kali

her lips no answer but question bound
as time and moonlight whisper down
clothed in space and black undone
withdrawn or bare or base in truth
in death,
in love,
inside, all round, all emptiness abide

darkness' heart resolved
her pearly sphere and waxing light embrace
in fluid grace from flight into concupiscence,
naked form transgress
this graven arch and veil unloosed or lost
in bliss or wind or flame combined

untamed she wanes once more defined
on warlike perch - this ashen ground,
and draws me in a circle round
my own incineration
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Some of the iconography is quite specific to Kali and the mythology surrounding her. Eros and Thanatos have ever and always been bound closely together in psychology, culture and human experience.