35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

432
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
ceased speaking truth into deaf ears, I thought that dawn, is that the
truth exists to bear the burden, carry the fright. It’s not our problem.
There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so . . . Not a bad
thought.
I had wandered for an hour through the narrow lanes, in and out of
small-looking temples that, once you’d passed through a cupboard
door sized entrance, expanded into a maze of pungent stone
passageways, burning camphor within incense, jasmine petals within
rosewater, shrines within shrines, halls within halls. Bells clanged;
another brand of incense made the very air sexy, beguiling. Priests
intoned the morning hymns while devotees humbly brought their
little tokens of esteem to the gods. I had no intention of seeing the
king of death again. I corrected myself: I wanted to avoid Amar, not
the tricky old merchant of terminal fire, because it was Amar who
had dredged up what I had thought had gone forever into my deeps,
what I’d thought I’d become. It was Amar who had pushed that inner
pendulum, whose movement from heaven to hell never ceases.
The fires of Siva serve a purpose, whether they burn within you
or around you. It’s like smelting metals: heat them to liquid and the
scum rises to the surface, where you can see it, and from where you
can remove it.
Every fool’s got a reason to feel sorry for himself,
And turn his heart to stone.
This fool’s halfway to heaven and a mile out of hell,
Yet I feel I’m coming home.
Nearer hell than heaven still, I had the profoundly moving feeling
that I was finally coming home. My heart was so high, so suddenly
light, that it seemed to scatter across the heavens like stars or falling
leaves – leaves the colour of a renunciant’s ochre robe, the colour of
a monk’s thoughts, falling from the tree of this world. I’d had the
feeling an age before, in Tiruvannamalai. I looked up, said Thank
you, and turned a corner to find Mother Ganges a vast road of dull
silver flecked with orange where she caught fragments of the teasing
sun and swept them off like autumn leaves.