Metaphysical Narrative

Once there was a woman who lived in a rock

and spent her days like a lotus burnt by frost

striving to be freed.


A great sage wandering in the wilderness

heard her singing a sad and gentle song

and followed her voice.


She taught him how to enter the rock,

the deep, open spaces inside, endless

worlds folded within worlds.


Every atom held a million universes.

He watched as they all came to an end

in a catastrophic fire.


Reality is internal to our minds.

—a found poem from a 10th C. Kashmiri Sanskrit text known as
"The Way to Freedom," and summarized by David Shulman
in The New York Review of Books.