Desire denudes the mind of divine calm.
Even Markandeya is not exempt 
From its bane as his wish once kills the balm
Of reigning repose by mortals undreamt.
The sage-devotee yearns for a Mayic glimpse
Of the sundered selves of Lord Narayana
In divers diffusion of cosmic pulse; 
The plural splendour in its arcana 
The Lord at once grants the wish of the boy, 
The doyen of penance in eternal teens 
The sage goes back to his hermitage in joy 
Serene and worships on Hari as seen
And present in the world elemental.
His being completely deluged with love 
Forgets to pray, his first wish essential 
He thinks as he returns conquered by love.

Then began the unrolling doom of chaos.
And on the bank of the Pushpabhadra, 
While engaged in his devotions, there rose 
A high wind whose roar sweet to Cassandra's 
Ears rang waking up Heaven's electric fire
Holding all space in a thunder of fury 
And it rained axle trees everywhere.
The four seas in their exultant hurry 
Of surge with their fierce sucking quicksands and 
Monsters wrote in pluvial tandem their merry 
Script with their fast destructive nexus band -

A devouring deluge it was he saw
That soon uprose to quench to extinction
The triune realms in scunying swallow
Thus blotting out all marks of distinction.
The sage stood the dismayed witness to all
This horrendous play of dissolution
And this lone fear struck Nara sans a pal
Floundered like one void of resolution.
And Prakriti's passionless whirling jig
Turned him into a pathos of panic - 
Ills of the flesh, hunger, thirst and fatigue
Taught him to taste the woes of mankind sick.
And drifting and floundering in the flood,
He felt that countless aeons had slipped by
Time-puzzled and borne on the Mayic flood
A doomsday it was darkness surrounded by.

But soon a vision marvellous greeted his eyes
Lo! An infant in the fold of a leaf
Lying with a splendour that cried in surprise
On the branch of the banyan in great relief
Swallowing up the pitch of darkened gloom.

This chit celestial was emerald hued.
A face fresh as that of a lotus bloom
Bore above a white conch-shaped neck that glowed.
His bewitching curls under his breath swayed
Gently to grace his brows of eyes and lo!
His ears the petalled charm living displayed.

A nectar-sweet smile creased his coral lips
Then he lifted his lotus foot to his mouth
And sucked sans a syllable from his lips
For the sage the sight caused his fatigue's rout
And his suspicion that he knew the child
Before him soon readied his lips to lisp
Just to affirm the truth his guess entailed
But ere he could realise his intent crisp
He was drawn into the body of the child
Sheath and spirit inhaling all the while

Within he saw the antedeluvian
World, Maya beguiled, entire, whole awhile.
In a stupor he spied the sky, earth and heaven
And all the multisplendoured sway of lives
The entire Cosmos as if it were real.
His own hermitage where sages hive
Not a jot of this scene smacked unreal
To the sage as he was lost in wonder and awe
But as the child respired he was thrown out
Into the sea of Dissolution whence he saw
The banyan on the elevated spot
And the infant in the fold of a leaf
Beaming the nectar-sweet smile once again.

In a flutter of agitating relief,
The sage, unable his urge in to rein
To hug the vision surged forward to him
But the Lord exalted vanished in a trice
The deluged desolation from his ken
Swam out to find the sage back in repose
In his hermitage and as before wise -