“Who knows what happened first…?”

In the Beginning

Neither Is nor Is Not was,
No when nor where nor why.
There was no sky because
There was nowhere for sky.

No stir of living breath,
No signs of night or day.
And what of death? No death
Or immortality.

The One alone lay breathing
(O ask not when or where!)
In the deep mindsea seething
Unconscious, unaware.

Nothing stretched beyond him,
There He lay all alone!
No one became I Am.
Up rose the Only One!

And in the One grew Love,
The first seed of the soul.
Space then, and stars enough,
And the sky’s blue bowl.

Who knows the truth? who can
Tell how this universe
Bubbled up and began?
Who knows what happened first?

The universal Dancer,
The Dreamer with his dreams,
He perhaps knows the answer
Of all that is and seems.

The why and the wherefore,
What makes Time’s river flow,
He knows the reason or—
Maybe he does not know!

(Translated from the Sanskrit (Rig-Veda X.129)
by Lasha Darkmoon in collaboration with ‘MW’.
Published in Acumen magazine, September 2006,
under the composite pen name ‘Manna Domini’.