In the beginning of time,
there rose from the churning of God’s dream two women.
One is the dancer at the court of paradise,
the desired of men, she who laughs and plucks the minds of the wise
from their cold meditations
and of fools from their emptiness;
and scatters them like seeds with careless hands in the extravagant
winds of March, in the flowering frenzy of May.
The other is the crowned queen of heaven,
the mother, thronedon the fullness of golden autumn;
she who in the harvest-time
brings straying hearts to the smile sweet as tears,
the beauty deep as the sea of silence,
-brings them to the temple of the Unknown,
at the holy confluence of Life and Death.
- Rabindranath Tagore
