The Song of Creation

For my Dad's Xmas present this year, I'm printing and framing his favorite creation story that comes from the Rigveda. I'm assuming he won't see this post so I don't think the secret will be revealed.

Thought I'd share "The Song of Creation" with the internet void...

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered it, and where, and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there of the day's and night's divider.
That one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature; apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was the severing line extended; what was above it then, and what below it.
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here, and energy beyond it.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, when it was born and whence it first came into being?
The gods are later than this world's production. Who knows, then, whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it.
Whose eyes controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, perhaps he knows not.

- Mandala X Hymn 129, Translated from the The Hymns of the Rigveda by RTH Griffiths, Vol IV, in KM Sen, Hinduism, Penguin Books, 1961