BY JAN HAAG

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + HAAG'S BIO




THE DEVAYANI POEMS

of exhortation based on an ancient Sufi form.



(in alphabetical order)


I began writing the Devayani Poems in about 1988, while living in a Korean Zen Center in Los Angeles.
Devayani is the spirtual name given to me by my Guru in 1980. It means: "Leads to God."



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ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES I

5319 9th Avenue N.E.


O Devayani


I am abducted
by the desire for fame.

I am separated
from my creative self.

I am grieving
for the loss of my purity.

I am in the dark
and do not know where to go or to look.

I am barren
of any thought and any hope.

I embrace death
with great despair and desire.

I am fertile
in the void of nothingness things begin.

I am reunited
to life in a new moderation.

There is light
everywhere for every one, for all things.




First lines from Deena Metzger's "Writing for your Life," p. 178-9






ENCOUNTER

1228 San Anselmo Avenue

*"Siva is one in whom the Universe 'sleeps'
after destruction and before the next cycle of creation."


"Do nothing,"
Shiva said from the banyan tree on the banks of the Tejasa.

"Do nothing,"
said Shiva, the divine, the charming, the curly haired.

"Do nothing,"
he said, his left toes braced against the further edge of his right foot.

O, Devayani, you know that pose: the hip low, the leg bent.
Krishna assumes it when he plays his flute.

Shiva poses above the dust in the breathless afternoon,
awesome in the size of the banyan tree,

his wild locks of snakes and the Ganges illuminated by the sun.
"What should I do?" your heart cried.

"Do nothing,"
Shiva said.

Ignorant child of the West, you asked, "How do I do nothing?"
O, Devayani,

Shiva said again,
"Do nothing."

"Do nothing,"
echoes in your silent skull, your stopped heart, your suspended stillness.

"How do I do nothing?"
Shiva tapped the damaru.**




*Hindu Gods and Goddesses, Swami Harshananda, p.59
** Shiva's two-headed drum






ETRUSCAN GODDESS

5319 9th Avenue N.E.
1997?

for Wendy Kirchoff


O Devayani, there's an Etruscan Goddess living
next door, the next cell over in life,
tall, elegant, with a bandaged knee.

She posseses pictures from outer space,
and processes momentary views
of her inner life.

Long hair, long legs, she hikes
in the North Cascades.

Imagine her, O Devayani, leaping up the paths,
hurtling from rock to rock,
coasting down the inclines,

flying over the very tops of the peaks,
long hair streaming,
shrieking with joy.

Rosy are her cheeks, huge are her eyes,
like pools, secret and brown,

in the heart of deciduous forests
that return, via meadowland,
to giant evergreens, living

through time, elusive as
the Etruscans, buried in their vaults,
revealing their knowledge

slowly
to high-tech archeologists,

grudgingly, fact by fact
over eons, infinite study,
eventually exposing the power

of the Etruscan Goddess.
O Devayani, study her ways,
discover the sources of joy,

rise from the riparian soil
become meadow, forest,

mountain, sky, fly across
(last line may be missing)