Psalms of the Brethren CCXIII: Kulla

Kulla had gone to where the dead lie still
And there he saw a woman’s body cast,
Untended in the field, the food of worms.

‘Behold the foul compound, Kulla, diseased,
Impure, dripping, exuding, pride of fools.’

Grasping the mirror of the holy Norm,
To win the vision by its lore revealed,
I saw reflected there, without, within,
The nature of this empty fleeting frame.

As is this body, so that one was once,
And as that body, so will this one be.
And as it is beneath, so is’t above,
And as it is above, so is’t beneath.

As in the daytime, so is it at night,
And as’t was once, so will’t hereafter be,
And as’t will be, so was it in the past.

Not music’s fivefold wedded sounds can yield
Such charm as comes o’er him who with a heart
Intent and calm rightly beholds the Norm!