Ieuan Published in Terence Culleton's Winter Newsletter: Hyra Brook - March 2024

[FranktheFrank]

A Virtuous Life
Sestina
We expire, death gathers pranas and devatas
Our bodies return our elements to the earth
The virtuous have lived according to holy law
They travel the southern path to the ancestral world
To spheres of the moon until karma is met
They watch Earth flood with light and radiant life

Earth revolves and shines with light and thrives with life
Death gathers expired souls and guarding spirits
Rises to moonbase where karma is freed of toil
Our bodies dissolve and release their elements
We tread lightly when the gods and goddesses sleep
and have kept virtue and duty in Sanskrit law

and helped the widow and the orphan by Sanskrit law
Earth floods with green, deep blue and radiant white
We travel to and wait in the ancestral world
Death gathers pranas and devatas
We surrender our elements to Mother Earth
Traverse Luna until God’s will is met

Dwell in spheres of the moon until karma is spent
The just live according to the holy law
The body returns its elements to the world
We watch Earth flood with light and radiant life
At death the soul gathers pranas and devatas
We take the southern path to our ancestral moon

Travel the southern path to the ancestral world
To spheres of the moon until karma is spent
At death the soul gathers pranas and devatas
The virtuous live according to the holy law
We gather together to see Earth flood with light
The body returns its parts from whence they came

At death the soul gathers breaths and deities
Travel the southern path to the ancestral world
We watch Earth flood with light and radiant life
Dwell in Lunar spheres until karma is spent
The virtuous live according to the holy law
Death gathers our souls and guarding spirits.

Ieuan ap Hywel
'I find this poem by the award-winning Welsh poet Ieuan ap Hywel beautiful in its mantra-like cycling and recycling of key Hindu precepts
regarding the goodness, the rightness, of both life and death, the experience of the soul in the afterlife, and the vital and continuing
connection between the soul in death and the world in which it has lived and in new ways continues to live according to the workings of
karma. Form and content are in perfect unity here.' Terence Culleton

[BobBradshaw]

Congratulations, Ieuan, on your poem and its publication!

Bob

[FranktheFrank]

Thanks Bob, also to you for your recent publication.