Here is an excerpt from My Guru and His Disciple where he shares an aha! moment, a discovery that allows him to move forward with the translation of the Bhagavad Gita text. What starts out as a pedantic laborious effort at transcription turns into poetry.

And then—it was really amazing—I saw in a flash what to do. I ran back to my room with the manuscript.

Our version began: “Oh, changeless Krishna, drive my chariot between the two armies which are eager for battle, that I may see those whom I shall have to fight in this coming war. I wish to see the men who have assembled here, taking the side of the enemy in order to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra.”

In about half an hour, I had turned this into:

Krishna the changeless,
Halt my chariot
There where the warriors,
Bold for battle,
Face their foeman.

Between the armies
There let me see them,
The men I must fight with,

Gathered together
Now at the bidding
Of him their leader,
Blind Dhritarashtra’s
Evil offspring:
Such are my foes
In the war that is coming.

I brought this back and showed it to them, and they were both excited. I’m excited myself, because it opens up all sorts of possibilities, and I now realize how horribly bored I was with the old translation. I don’t see my way clearly yet, but obviously this method can be applied throughout the book. There should be several different kinds of verse, and I think I can vary the prose style too. We are going to Aldous this evening, to discuss the whole thing with him. — Christopher Isherwood, October 1943