Thou art the sacredness of a white page

By Isabel F Bussy

From across The Atlantic we received these two short poems inspired by a couple of Sanskrit phrases. One of them, Tat twam asi is a fundamental mantra in the teaching of Hindu philosophy and yoga. It ponders on the unity of the individual soul with the universal consciousness. The other, Śvetā, refers to sacredness and the fear of writing on a white page

Tat tvam asi

What is left here? 
What is left, but a relic that cannot mirror time
And you, the seer.
No scent came from burnt charcoal and thyme.
No ocean found cerulean after being bathed by the sky.
What is left here? 
       At least let there be This and That. 
The seer, and more than a tame white-eye.
       At least let there be bureaucrats and a heart bone-dry.
Who is left here? 
Is it the Swan and Memory as the world’s dead souvenir?  
Or is it you, and I, imitated many times.

Or not many times, but one.
Or not even one, but none.

§

Śvetā

Lately, I cannot write on an empty page. This is my first attempt in months. As if the space is too spacious, and the vacant has this nauseous mildness to it. 
                                  I feel only comfortable spitting in the rivel 
                                  along other sentences. Words that already 
                                  saved the ground before me. 
               Maybe this is what Ahab witnessed all along.
 	                          A space, tolerantly vast; 
                                  White in its dissolution of you and me 
               Maybe I fear the tremor of Time, her loose grip and sorrowful 
eyes to see. 

And that in the aftermath loyal to her repose, I cannot expand myself 
anymore; 
                                                         not through the echoes 
                                                         hung over my tree
                                                         not through the etching of 
                                                         a ghost I stand for. 
Because in all this whiteness, in the arcane vacuum that is an empty page, not even our finest alibi will find traces of me,
                              of my ashes, aimlessly staged 
                              strolling and growling at the edge 
                              of Time’s debris. 

Isabel F Bussy is a young writer and translator from Argentina living in Florida. Presently she is enjoying a sabbatical year before returning to Buenos Aires to conclude her studies of medicine. In a few months she has become a very valuable member of Perro Negro with transcriptions, translations and her own articles and poems in both English and Spanish