śrī dīnabandhvaṣṭakam

Eight verses by the ascetic Brahmananda, and what they ask for is sight rather than rescue: may that friend of the destitute come today within reach of my eyes. The first verse identifies him by function alone — from whom this world beginning with the four-faced one arises, in whom the whole of it rests as its root, into whom all of it goes at the end — and only the second puts a body to it, the discus lovely with a thousand rays, the heavy mace, the fine conch, the lotus feet set on the back of the king of birds. The sixth states the paradox the whole hymn turns on: though without shape or quality or connection, he takes a form out of pity for those devoted to him, and though present everywhere has made a serpent's body his bed.