In August up on top Chamundi Hill,
Above Mysore, I heard the horns and still
I hear them in my feet and want to leap
Across the ages, continents and keep
The joy of one brief moment in my soul,
When beauty, truth and Earth and I were whole.

And though, as was so often in the past,
The images of gods and battles cast
In story, stone and memory, return
To ravage all we might have been and spurn,
Still I will try to keep alive the spell
Of horns I heard and hear and try to tell
In words how sounds can bounce and leap and drone,
In temples built on hills into our bone.