Kali's Dance | Navjyot Kaur Vilain

The following poem by Navjyot Kaur Vilain from Le Monastère, France was selected as a commendable mention in Wingword Poetry Prize 2020

The Mother has stirred

From the dark night of destruction

In the wake of tyranny

Amidst the denial of the sacred

She has arisen

With a surge of rage in her veins

And with divine justice in her heart

 

Be warned

Her howl resurrects the silenced from their stupor

Her eyes burn to the core of the countless crimes

Unveiling dark paradigms and darker narratives

And layer upon layer of lies and lies and lies

The heartbreak, her shield, her force to shatter the madness

 

O the primordial force! the Goddess of goddesses ! The Black One !

Noble titles bleed away as her feet stand engaged in virtue

The warrior untamed, loyal only to the source

She needs neither consent nor ceremony

For she, the rightful guardian of destruction

Guided by ferocious wrath and fierce love

Armed with fearlessness in the face of ignorance and hypocrisy

Fuelled by the injustice to the spirit of the soul

She strides upon the violation of the land and the death of the truth

 

As humankind sways to the beat of disorder

Wings of the world clipped by the vultures of deceit

Her bare feet tread upon the ashes of arrogance

Uprooting an ill-authority of misdeeds and malice

Crushing the foundations of a bloodsucking reality

She has risen to slay the predators might

She has risen to sever the bondage of obedience

She has risen in the name of freedom

 

She leads from the shadow of humanity

From behind the curtain she clings to the lost souls

She dances

Destroying the infectious virus of greed

From the foul scent of decaying minds

She dances

To the crematorium of illusions

Burning the pillars of power and privilege

She dances

 

Unhindered flames purify versions of vice and hate

The smoke purges sick structures of oppression

She dances

With the flow of her seasons will

The dance of death and life and death and life

Her rhythm holds no reason for he who cannot dance

Within her passion for life and her honour of death

 

The unseen Majesty of love

The ultimate restorer of righteousness

Grounded within her timeless grace

And ever blazing fire of life-giving abundance

Planting the humble seed of consciousness within the heart

From a love ignited by the calling of the truth

More intense than the fires that consume

A love more fierce than her fury

 

Defender of the light, bearer of the truth

From the darkness she rises to rebirth the sovereign law

 

“Oh glorious Kali

From the sanctity of your omnipresent love

Evoke the alchemy of change

And rebirth a braver new world”

 

In the name of death

In the name of life

And in the name of love

She dances.