Kāli

Deep inside the heart of the blaze

She dances - a luminous tongue of blue and black;

Her liquid flaming form, flickering through a diaphanous veil of mist,

Weaving sinuous  trails of the purest combustion.

Not for Her the subliminal shapes of dark,

No inchoate, amorphous iniquities entice Her.

Unleashed from the brow of the all-consuming wrath,

She devours legions of the demon’s spawn

Springing from the demon’s blood.

Hers is the lolling tongue, that curls around

The crimson rivers gushing into the unknown deep, and

Laps up droplets before they land.

You are the primordia

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l force,

Lo, the Black One of the eternal night!

The destroyer, beyond foul and fair,

Engulfing hope and despair,

Before time and beyond space.

Your gaunt frame bathed in the blood of evil unalloyed,

Your sunken eyes from the depths of your skull

Send forth a conflagration,

Laying waste to all Creation;

Sword and disembodied head in hands,

You dance on.

Your skirt of severed limbs,

Whirling around in terrible cadence amongst the stars,

You set the universe ablaze.

For You are the power and the glory incarnate,

Your splendor past compare

You are the unstoppable, the invincible Om!