CONTRAPUNTAL: BHAGAVAD GITA BY SHALINI RANA

When goodness grows weak   

When evil increases,                     

I make myself a body.                    

song vessels me inward

like a tremulous tide

I enter a strange home.

This is a contrapuntal poem; it can be read from multiple directions. The italicized lines come from the Bhagavad-Gita: The Song of God by Swami Prabhavananda (translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood). The non-italicized lines are written by the poet.

Shalini Rana is a poet and translator from Northern Virginia. Her debut poetry manuscript, No One but the Sun, was selected as a 2024 international finalist for Singapore Unbound’s Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize. Shalini’s work appears in The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Aleph Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas.

@shalinikrana