The Golden River

Elena Hailwood

I came across this poem on a tatty sheet of paper whilst rummaging through my parents attic in the days before I was set to go to Rishikesh, India for my yoga teacher training in the summer of 2016. It was written in a child’s handwriting, with my name scribbled underneath the three short verses. The poem felt significant, somehow, so I wrote it down and took it with me.

The Ganges is a holy river in India, and they say it carries the souls of the dead to heaven, cleansing them of their sins, allowing them to escape the cycle of rebirth. It runs through the centre of Rishikesh, many miles downstream from Varanasi, where thousands of Indians each year are cremated, their families safe in the knowledge that the water will carry their soul to freedom. When I arrived in Rishikesh, that dark, muddy water, invested with so much magic, felt bewitching and unnerving. It’s easy to feel disoriented, like your world’s been thrown off balance, when you’re meditating each day from 5 in the morning, and eating strange food, and when everyone around you shares a conviction that there’s more to the world than what you see. Physics and biochemistry don’t rule here, they do not explain the world. The ideas you’ve been taught (however loosely) for making sense of things around you are the tales of fools: laughably incomplete. I came out onto the banks of The Ganges each day, from the Ashram that backed onto it, and looked out at the river, feeling all of this magic as though the air was singing with it, and also feeling a little confused, and a little silly.

The poem is dated the 28th of October, 2001, when I was 11. I wrote it three years before my mum passed away and a year before we lost her, really, to a deep and tragic depression. The poem feels ominous, and I can’t think what I was writing about at the time. I have no memory of writing it, so it’s hard to say, but possibly it was just something we were told to do for school or something inspired by a children’s TV show, or some strange thoughts that had run through my head. Anyway, here it is, that strange poem, that speaks of a river, and things that came downstream.

The Golden River (Ellie 28.10.01)

Somewhere there’s a golden river,

Deep as space itself,

And in it lies it all,

The key to happiness and health.

And if you look deep enough

And cherish all its beauty

Set free from my body

You’ll see a peaceful me.

Like golden silk set free in wind,

As pure as the purest liquid,

Forgotten is all the troubles of life,

Forgotten is everything I did.