With my first step onto the seventh-story floor
I removed the coolness like a shoe
that I’d brought from the courtyard
painted with cow dung.
I donned the new room like a sweater
with windows, shelves, and walls,
the surroundings climbing my body like bougainvillea.

Whenever moving between homes
I carry bits of the old ones on my body.

The walls of the next home are made of sunlight
that disappears with darkness.
To put on this home
is to enter dreamfulness
as a road to reality.

At the final home, a pillow waits
on my side of a shared bed
beside a window facing south.

The south is the house of death.
I make it my body
and lie down on my pillow.

Now
I am ready.

-Doha, From the Ramacharitamanas, Adikanda

The name of Rama is a universal tree
That shelters us in these fallen times -

And merely recalling it has taught me
To be true to my own:

For I, Tulsidas, who was as scrawny and dry
As a leaf of cannabis,

Have now turned as green and life-giving,
As a leaf of the tulsi-plant;

The name of rama has brought me to delight in my own.

नामु राम को कलपतरु कलि कल्यान निवासु |
जो सिमरत भयो भाँग ते तुलसी तुलसीदास ||