कविं पुराणमनुशासितार मणोरणीयांसमनुस्मरेद्यः।सर्वस्य धातारमचिन्त्यरूप मादित्यवर्णं तमसः परस्तात्॥
kaviṃ purāṇam anuśāsitāramaṇor aṇīyānsam anusmared yaḥsarvasya dhātāram acintya-rūpamāditya-varṇaṃ tamasaḥ parastāt
Word by word
The verse says
One who keeps in mind the ancient seer, the one who orders all things, smaller than the smallest, the holder of everything, whose form thought cannot reach, shining like the sun, beyond the dark —
In plain words
A run of descriptions that will not sit together.
Smaller than an atom, and holding everything. Ancient, and shining like the sun right now.
Acintya-rūpam — a form thought cannot get around. The list is not meant to resolve into a picture.
Where you've felt this · in study
Try to picture the number of people living in a large city. You cannot do it. You get a vague crowd and then you give up. And yet you can plan a route across that city, avoid its worst traffic, and meet one particular person at four o'clock. Not being able to picture a thing is no bar to dealing with it exactly.
Going deeper
Descriptions that cancel each other out are doing something other than describing.
Smaller than the smallest and the support of everything cannot both be pictured at once, and the verse says as much — thought cannot reach this form. A list like that is not a portrait. It is a set of directions, each one blocking a wrong turn. Too small to be a thing among things. Too large to be left out of anything.
This is why the chapter keeps moving between the abstract and the personal without apology. Neither language holds on its own.
What it saves you from is a particular kind of failure. If you have ever concluded that you cannot be devoted because you cannot form a clear mental image of God, the verse says that nobody can, and that this was never the requirement.