"I could not say where it began,
perhaps only the stars can, for beginnings
come clothed in mist."

"Hate dissevers takin and goral, black bear and beaver, deer, leopard and dragonfly harboured by this hermitage, hate blanches your still- human eyes, flows down larynx and pharynx and trachea, leadens the breath and whirlpools memory’s voice till all you know all you feel all you seek is nothingness."

"Vyaasa, my lone living son Vyaasa – with words to hymn this story across millennia while birth and death and love and youth jostle for place, while hate, old hate, spores and multiplies"