Sacrifice

I have been exploring the theme of sacrifice (Yagna) in my book-writing project. Sacrifice, like everything else in an invocatory philosophy, is multi-dimensional. It is intimate and subjective in this context, and often invisible and overlooked by the values of the mundane world.

The poem below is a reflection of some revelations that emerge from my dance inquiry into Yagna, which is what renders dance as invocation.

I dissolve

as the outburst of bird-chatter

oracular hymns

snowflakes quietly landing

on Earth still warmer than Sky.

I erase myself

with brush strokes of sunset crimson

and water offerings to herbs

of invocations

flung from bone-memories.

I am not.

Death is vortices of solitude

where passion seizes

with jolting immediacy

voiding pasts and unnecessary futures.

Suddenly

I taste the pungent intimacy of living.

-Padma Menon