They ask me, “Who should fold us?”
I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me
while dispersing, “We seek a shepherdess!”
Whom should they seek?
That they do not know. And like derelict evening
clouds they drift in the trackless dark, and are lost
and forgotten.
25
I feel that your brief days of love have not been
left behind in those scanty years of your life.
I seek to know in what place, away from the slow-thieving
dust, you keep them now. I find in my solitude
some song of your evening that died, yet left a deathless
echo; and the sighs of your unsatisfied hours I find
nestled in the warm quiet of the autumn noon.
Your desires come from the hive of the past to haunt
my heart, and I sit still to listen to their wings.
26
You have taken a bath in the dark sea. You are
once again veiled in a bride’s robe, and through
death’s arch you come back to repeat our wedding
in the soul.
Neither lute nor drum is struck, no crowd has gathered,
not a wreath is hung on the gate.
Your unuttered words meet mine in a ritual unillumined
by lamps.
27
I was walking along a path overgrown with grass, when
suddenly I heard from some one behind, “See
if you know me?”
I turned round and looked at her and said, “I
cannot remember your name.”
She said, “I am that first great Sorrow whom
you met when you were young.”
Her eyes looked like a morning whose dew is still
in the air.
I stood silent for some time till I said, “Have
you lost all the great burden of your tears?”
She smiled and said nothing. I felt that her
tears had had time to learn the language of smiles.
“Once you said,” she whispered, “that
you would cherish your grief for ever.”
I blushed and said, “Yes, but years have passed
and I forget.”
Then I took her hand in mine and said, “But
you have changed.”
“What was sorrow once has now become peace,”
she said.
28
Our life sails on the uncrossed sea whose waves chase
each other in an eternal hide-and-seek.
It is the restless sea of change, feeding its foaming
flocks to lose them over and over again, beating its
hands against the calm of the sky.
Love, in the centre of this circling war-dance of
light and dark, yours is that green island, where
the sun kisses the shy forest shade and silence is
wooed by birds’ singing.
29
AMA AND VINAYAKA
Night on the battlefield: Ama meets
her father VINAYAKA.
Father!
Shameless wanton, you call me “Father”!
you who did not shrink from a Mussulman husband!
