Swami Vivekananda's Kali The Mother Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Kali The Mother as a poem
Is one in praise of Goddess Kali,
The Dark Goddess
Which he did
While had been in Kashmir
On Dal Lake
In Srinagar on a houseboat.

After visiting the Kheer Bhawani temple
In Srinigar
With Bhawani as the deity,
He wrote the poem
Under the fever of inspiration
And the frenzy of the moment.

How to invoke, take to,
How to mythicize,
How to mystify,
How to know the Unknowable,
How to feel the Terrible She
Engaged his space,
His heart and soul!

And he knew it not how to transcend that
Ecstasy,
The fever of inspiration,
The frenzy of moment
With the soul in sadhna
And the spirits howling,
Frightening!

It is a dark night
Starless and full of black-out,
Clouds heaped upon clouds,
Full of revelations,
Experiments with the Nocturnal Force
Testing the sadhna of the sadhakas.

With the image of Bhawani,
He thinks of the churning
Of the ocean
And taking of poison,
The Tandava of Shiva,
Of Kali,
The trance and fever
Of sadhna.

How to narrate, take to
Her lila, rupa,
Shyama Kali, Samshana Kali,
Kali Bluish, Kali Dark Black,
How to
The bibhatsha rupa of Hers
During annihilation of the demons!

The creational force and fever,
The fury and fusion,
How to take to,
The motherly commotion and clamour
Subsiding into a calm,
Upheaval after uproar!

Holding the Hindu view of life,
Attributing and assigning
With the break of diseases
And their ultimate check,
He takes to the horror and terror element
To dwell upon the thing
In hand.

Terror is Her name,
Death Her breath,
Destroying the asuric forces,
Annihilating avidya,
Lessening sin,
She comes, comes
With the steps of Hers.

Kali The Mother is a Kali poem,
A Shakti poem
One of the Kheer Bhwani temple
Written in 1898
In Kashmir's Srinagar
When he had gone to
After coming from America
Attending the Parliament of the World's Religions.

There is nothing as specific,
But as usual
As it is in Aurobindo's
Revelation and Trance of Waiting
And Transformation,
Dealing with the trysts and experiments
With the Supernatural Divine,
Mythical and Mystical too
Apart from Revelatory.

The trance of sadhna,
The mystique of the moments,
The facades of truth
To be justified,
How to tell them
If shrouded in mystery,
Everything lying muffled,
Transmuted.