Amrita delves into being and becoming in this evocative poem, exclusively for Different Truths.

We were inchoate darkness,
Primordial notions unspecified,
Innerscape, macabre dreamscape,
Outside the cerebral domain
We were not existent then.

It was dark inside,
So cold, so silent,
So hard and soft,
Our feet sank,
In quagmires of
Speculative conceptualisation.

We were notions
The lotus eater was invented at the full moon,
Discarded at noon,
We wailed
As we exploded in his synaptic cocoon.
We learnt to lament
As we mourned,
It’s too soon.

Our eyes were conceived
Shaped of pellucid moonlight
Skeins of silver vapour seen by him
The lotus eater had such elegant dreams.

And oh! Sometimes
Dreamless snores
Rocked our landscape
With mighty roar
There we were!
Not yet us,
How we shook. 

As sentience spun
Its spell at last.

Consciousness arrived
Mingled with fear,
How would the end
Of our world appear?

Through glass panes
Of eternal eyes
We began to chart
Our natal skies
What we saw
Became our ken
We flew out
Of Brahma’s vision then!

Inhabitants
Of an earth
He dreamt of…
Or was it there
All along?
Which came first
The golden egg
Or Brahma’s birth?

As our minds became
Our own,
Sewn of thought
That He had sown,

Are we still inside?
His head?
Do we control him?
Is he dead?

Is the seed bearing dreamer?
Are we mind spores
He bore?
Or is He spaceship
Supra-sentient?
Are we algorithms
Of AI descent?

Abra ca dabra!
Who cast the spell?
Who created the Creator
So well?

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths

Amrita Valan

Amrita Valan holds a master’s degree in English literature and has worked in BPOs, as a content creator, and as a receptionist at a five-star hotel. She loves life, tumbles headfirst into it, and observes it. She has written over a thousand poems on love, spirituality, family, religion, current affairs, human rights, short stories, rhymes, and tales for children. She’s from Kolkata and is a mother of two little boys.

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