There are ecstatic rituals every do-good deity knows;
there are myriad ways to flout, grin, and pose,
so that even virgins undulate like struck water -
but no one, states the Puranas, will ever master
a fraction of the multi-million postures Shiva savors.
His sacred prowess is cause for my wonder -
coming from a god who smells like burnt grass,
who wears two cobras coiled around his biceps -
what strange fires must smolder beneath his skin,
and what an appetite to quench, when he is smitten;
for he’s a being whose gaze unleashes rivers, an ocean
of desire, a lover whose smile’s a danger zone,
whose touch awakens sunken leviathans to rise
up like fountains from their former lives.
Eight million ways to move, make love, to take
a woman out of her body and soul, and bring her back -
postures whirling like tornados, brief as eclipses,
ceremonial as a rain dance; movements slick
as oiled arias, kisses inspiring drugged trances;
his tongue a glistening shrine, his teeth avalanches,
his mouth hewn from the deepest hole in space,
his breath a meadow of mint, a web of spindrift,
his wide neck taut with cords of rolling muscles,
his chest an orchestra, his heart a ship’s hull,
his arms huge sea nets, opposing shores,
his belly an island forested in ripe mangoes,
his penis a gourd into which the universe flows,
and his entry like the moment of death -
§
art work Yogi Shiva by Samundra Man Singh
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