The Epic of Mandala: Canto I

Mandala stood and waited for the light

To change so he could cross the street. His right

Hand held his black umbrella to keep off

The mist. The storm’s rain turbulanced the trough

Between the sidewalk and the concrete street,

The remnants streaming in chaotic beat

Into the drains below his feet. The cars

Slowed at the yellow, red electric stars

That ordered inefficiently the spins

Of endless satellites. The crowd begins

To move. Mandala moves with it. He’s budged

Into the street and as he walks he’s nudged

In random walks as he flows down the walk.

He thinks that he and Barbara have to talk.

Mandala lived with Barbara, and they’d been

Together through his Ph.D., from when

They met in his first year when he was reading

His poetry. The coffee shop was needing

More patrons, and they opened evenings up

For open mics at night. She had a cup

Of mocha which she sipped in rhythm to

Manadala’s rhymed iambic verse. She grew

Enamored with him with each rhyming line,

Until she almost felt his wisdom shine.

(It hardly hurt that he was handsome, whole

Addition to the beauty of his soul.)
he finished and she went to him, and they

Had been together from that very day.

And now Mandala was prepared to dine

With her tonight, Antonio’s at nine.

Mandala could not learn enough, and so

His education started with the low

And least complex and moved into the high

And most complex, from math, the simple lie,

Precise approximation of the truth,

A sentiment that many thought uncouth,

Through quantum physics, then through chemistry –

He also majored in biology.

An economics Master’s he achieves,

Then Ph.D. in the humanities,

With major publications in them all,

He nonetheless felt he had hit a wall.

The only time that Mandala felt free

Was any time he wrote his poetry,

Disorder that exploded in the form

That helped contain the dialectic storm.

The rain engaged the waves of hair that fell

Down to his collar, stringing it. To dwell

Upon his past with her, the problems he

Would have without her, warm nostalgia’s plea

Combined with comfort’s soothing voice could not

Dissuade him from his course. This was his lot –

He knew what he must do – he heard the voice

That led him well. He had the choice

To listen or ignore it, yet he knew

Ignoring it would make deep pain his due

And he would end up doing what he should,

And only then would his life become good.

He learned his lesson the way we all learn:
by suffering. All people seem to spurn

Advice from everyone. Mandala was

The same, and so he suffered, as one does

When one ignores what one knows one must do

And wanders off the path one knows is true.

Mandala wandered once the woods – those free

Of messiness, of pure geometry.

But he was told, “My son, it’s time to go.

The world must grow complex so you an know

The way the universe became to be –

You must reflect the university.”
But he resisted, wanting to remain

In heaven’s harmonies. He would not deign

Consider messiness a worthy thing

To understand, to study, or to sing.

And so he fell in love with one who would

Refuse to love him back. He thought he could

Convince her, but she said she was in love

And would not leave her boyfriend. His love of

She who he could not have drew him away

From all his friends, into a forest gray

With shadows, where he wandered, then alone

The first time in his life. The trees were bone,

The ravens watched with eyes of stone, the sky

And leaves were textured, greyed the same. A fly

Annoyed him with the only sound. The path

Wound down into a valley where his wrath

Turned in upon itself, and when he saw

A deep abyss, he looked into its maw.

The empty blackness stared at him, he fell,

And would have kept on falling into Hell

Had not a rope been flung to him. He reached

And grabbed the rope before the darkness leached

His soul from him. Mandala felt himself

Pulled up until he reached the abyss shelf

And aw a bushy-mustached man, his hand

Outstretched to help Mandala onto land.

“It’s fortunate you did not have that far

To fall,” the man said. “You’re a dancing star

Who neither knows he is a star and still

Must learn to dance. You have to climb the hill

Before you now before you can shed light

On others’ paths to tear away their night.”
“You throw me in the pit to help me out?”
Mandala asked. “You fill me full of doubt

Then try to give me confidence to ruse

Above the rest?” “Of course. He who denies

Me, I will come to them. You fell, I came.”
Mandala breathed a long, low sigh. “Your fame,”
The man continued, “Will increase if you

Learn to embrace and speak to all what’s true.”

“I always speak what’s true. I speak in math.”
“A seeming hard, but really simply path.

You have to grow into complexity

And not get weighed down by your gravity.

A single poem has much more to say

Than all the man you know or ever may.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mandala said.

“There’s much more that you need inside your head,”
The man continued. “Physics up through life,

The brain, the social sciences, the strife

That drives complexity, humanities.”

A jasmine scent embraced them on a breeze.

The man said, “Someday soon you’ll see the truth.

And now, I hope you don’t find me uncouth,

But I must leave you know so you’ll find you

Beneath the things you learned – there lies what’s true.”

“You start off well, then leave with a cliché?”

“It’s really all the same from day to day.

You surely know the song, ‘It’s All Been Done,’

The verse ‘There’s nothing new under the sun’?”

Mandala said, “Now wait a minute, there.

That’s patently untrue. With every pair

Of paradox resolved in constant strife

The universe complexified to life

And man, whose brains complexify with time

And social density, to reduce crime

And deaths by war across our history

As liberal social orders make us free,

Emerged to understand that universe,

Ourselves, as much as we are bridge and nurse

To more complex and thus more beautiful

New forms of thought and being in each skull.”

“My lovely boy, you’re wise enough to know

All that, so what is it that dims your glow?

Closed mind, and system, falls to entropy –

Both open both, increase complexity.”
With that, the man then walked away to seek

The crest so he could leap from peak to peak.

But that was many years ago. He grew

To learn to love the chaos, for he knew

It would self-organize without his thought

To pressure it into new form – it brought

Itself about, much as the thought that pulled

Him to decide that it was time he culled

His life of Barbara. What he had to do

Required that he dissolve any glue

That held him to a certain time or place.

He hoped that he could cut her off with grace.