from the mahabharata, arjuna and krishna by the river
excerpt from William Buck's adaptation, part 1, IV: p51-52
Maya said, “Cherished King, let me repay your kindness. Let me make something for you. Bharata, I am a great artist, and can create whatever you wish for.”
Arjuna answered, “Then build us a palace—such a palace as cannot be imitated, even after careful examination.”
Maya leaned back against a tree and smiled. “Yes . . . yes!” he said. “I will. On the northern slope of the Himalayas there is a place filled with flat posts set in the Earth that shine like the gods; they are bordered with gold, and decorated with golden flowers and set with jewels. I don’t know who put them there or what they mean, for they are left from long ago, before my time. But nearby I have stored my own gemstones, roughly hewn to size for a building. I shall go there and return with my supplies. And also, for you, Arjuna, I have the conchshell trumpet named Devadatta that came from the sea into my hands somehow. I’ve saved all this for the right person for a long time.”
Krishna lay down alongside the river, and said, “Ages ago I set out those markers, one by one, to ornament that mountainside and show that I was never far away. Now no one lives there. But I have put my signs in the rest of the world just as clearly. They are all around, if a man will see them—all around him, wherever he goes.”
Maya smiled at the river flowing by, and said to himself, “It is true, then, that nothing living can even blink its eye without you.”
Arjuna asked, “Who used to live there?”
“You did,” said Krishna.
“I don’t remember it.”
“No. We lived there a long time, and it was your home. There you found love and sorrow, and happiness and death. But you remember nothing at all.”