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Bangkok Opera: Music

"O Ramachandra" from Ayodhya by Somtow Sucharitkul

(Michael Chance, Bangkok Opera, conducted by Somtow Sucharitkul)
18-11-2006
From a live performance at the Thailand Cultural Centre
GANESHA
O Ramachandra
O Sita, child of Daskantha,
Listen to the words of Ganesha,
from whose lips only truth can spring.

The cosmos is an illusion,
and love and death but shadows
cast by the turning of the karmic wheel.

The marriage of Sita and Rama
is the union of earth and sky
forever apart, yet each
unthinkable without the other.

Ayodhya is more than a city
It is an idea, beyond space and time.
Where mortals dream of truth,
where kings yearn to rule in the way of Dharma,
there stands Ayodhya the golden,
bathed in Ishvara’s perpetual light.

Rise from your graves,
demons, monkeys, angels, and men.
The war, like life itself
is but a dream;
a dream that shall last from the dawn of time
till time itself shall end,
for the war between good and evil
is the dance that sustains the cosmos.

Earth, Ocean, Hell and Heaven,
Grieve no more.
Hear the words I have scribed
in fire on the scroll of Valmiki.

Ascend, O King and Queen,
Vishnu and Lakshmi.
Embrace. By the grace of Ishvara
you are reconciled.
your love is limitlesss
as the infinite Atman.
Your kingdom is the universe,
your glory shall know no end.