Poetry at Sangam

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Canto 7: Thiruvempavai / Song of Awakening by Manikkavacagar

Verse 1

 

Of the five kinds of sleep
we know not much but this
 dreaming life we lead with eyes open
 is the one from which we must awaken
So Manikkavacagar sings
in this Song of Awakening,
Thiruvempavai each of us
inexperienced in bliss

We sing of splendour without end without beginning
Do you hear the song and still sleep on?   Girl with large
sword-bright eyes his radiance overshoots light   Does

the sodden so stuff your ears that you can’t catch
his anklets’ cosmic sound thundering the street

we tread?   Here’s one weeping  swept into sacred swoon
lost to all but rapture   You slumber on in your flower
strewn couch   What pity   To the resounding flame awaken

 

Note

Manikkavacagar’s most sung song, his call for awakening. Verse 1 is offered by each of us separately, in two versions, though joined in questing. My three -two-three line structuring of the verse perhaps suggests the three bands of ash smeared across the foreheads of bhaktas as their allegiance to Siva.

 

 

 

← Priya Sarukkai Chabria

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