ശ്രീകാലഹസ്തീശ്വരാഷ്ടകമ്

Eight verses to the Shiva of Kalahasti, and every one of them closes on the same line, I worship the lord of Kalahasti, giver of happiness. The first is a single sweep: he who is the arrow on the couch of the restless Shesha shining with beauty, the chakora bird to the moonlight of the mountain girl's face, in whom the five-arrowed one's form was burnt by the fire of the eye at his brow. The second is built on the word kala repeated at the head of each line — the poison, then time, then death — carrying the halahala at the middle of his throat, breaking apart the sky and water and space of the working of time, tearing out by the root the creeper of the pride of death. That repetition on the temple's own name is the hymn's organising device.