“Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu Ma Kalratri Rupena Samsthita।
Namastasye Namastasye Namastasye Namo Namaha ll”
O Devi Kaalratri, Athi Bhayankari
With a hue of pitch indigo
Deepening into raven nights lost in eternity
As you rage and make the universe tremble
In this most ferocious of primordial forms
Having manifested the black tapestry of the universe
For light of awareness to play the game of creation
You the point of final dissolution of all our delusions
Naked but for a crimson tapestry of an exploding nebula
Carelessly thrown around your quivering body
Garlanded with scarlet unguents of shredded stars
With the most exquisite of slender limbs
Having shed your soft golden skin
You enthrall and bewitch with your dark beauty
With curved fangs that can frighten celestial Serpents
Lightning forks of your laughter rippling the skies
Your pealing humor rolls in as omnious thunder claps
With the scimitar and noose in hand you manifest
To lap in death and gory entrails of frenzied wars
Riding the slow gadarbha of our sluggish minds
You steer mere mortals through the mirage of
To dispel self-doubt and evil from its remotest corners
You are the source of the three gunas (sattva, rajas, tamas)
You inspire within us fearlessness
Exploding through the Shashrara chakra
Overflowing to merge the willing and awakened mind
With the fountainhead that is divine consciousness
Bestowing upon the worthy ‘ghyana’ and ‘vairagya’
You make visible all that can be seen and unseen
O Mother Kaalratri, devourer of Shiva the Kala (Time)
Little do we mortals realize the intricacy of your intimacy
With the eternal darkness of cosmic matter
That fills space and is one with the energy
of the ever mediating inert Shiva
The veritable ‘mirror house’ of all ferocious Devi roopas
You merge and manifest with the need of the times
As Ma Chandi (Ambika) slayer of Shumbha and Nishumbha
As Ma Chamunda vanquisher of Chanda & Munda
O Terrible Raudri, slayer of Ruru
As Devi Kaalratri from Mata Katyayani destroyer of Raktabeeja
Drinking up every drop of his blood
Before it could fall on Earth and spring more demons
As , Bhadrakali, Bhairavi and so many countless avtaars
These pages are insufficient to recount
Stories of your ferocious valor
Defying the boundaries of feminine fragility
What am I but matter that crumbles to dust
At the mere thought of you O Bhayankari
Human mind despite its elastic expanse
Still cannot stretch to comprehend
The incomprehensible expanse that is you
You wield terror upon evil
You O Mother as you play and twiddle
Having swallowed and annihilated Time itself
For now you twirl time around a wild cascade of tresses
Falling from your crown to your feet
Billowing dark clouds that span the endless universe
Behind your striding form
You O Mother, have the power to
Uplift our spirits to the heavens or
Trample us to wallow in self-created doldrums
Our hands are too puny and impure to sculpt
The perfection of your gracious curvatures
And so we make do with abstract representations
For our eyes with rigid frames are unable to bend & stretch
To visualize the complexity of your indescribable form
While the advanced sadhakas dare
To Meditate upon you as a two dimensional yantra
And conduct homas with erasable kolams upon the ground
Just once a year on Saptami day of Sharad Navratri
Our capacity to behold you, O Devi
We ordinary folks make do with a hurried obeisance
For as mere infants in the hierarchy of cosmic beings
Too immature and unprepared to behold
the potency of your vibrating energy
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