The morning star has the same palpitating hush; the
early light is enmeshed in the branches that overbrow
your window, as in those other days.
That times are changed I forget for a little, and
have come.
I forget if you ever shamed me by looking away when
I bared my heart.
I only remember the words that stranded on the tremor
of your lips; I remember in your dark eyes sweeping
shadows of passion, like the wings of a home-seeking
bird in the dusk.
I forget that you do not remember, and I come.
17
The rain fell fast. The river rushed and hissed.
It licked up and swallowed the island, while I waited
alone on the lessening bank with my sheaves of corn
in a heap.
From the shadows of the opposite shore the boat crosses
with a woman at the helm.
I cry to her, “Come to my island coiled round
with hungry water, and take away my year’s harvest.”
She comes, and takes all that I have to the last grain;
I ask her to take me.
But she says, “No”—the boat
is laden with my gift and no room is left for me.
18
The evening beckons, and I would fain follow the travellers
who sailed in the last ferry of the ebb-tide to cross
the dark.
Some were for home, some for the farther shore, yet
all have ventured to sail.
But I sit alone at the landing, having left my home
and missed the boat: summer is gone and my winter
harvest is lost.
I wait for that love which gathers failures to sow
them in tears on the dark, that they may bear fruit
when day rises anew.
19
On this side of the water there is no landing; the
girls do not come here to fetch water; the land along
its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a noisy flock
of saliks dig their nests in the steep bank
under whose frown the fisher-boats find no shelter.
You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning
wears on. Tell me what you do on this bank so
dry that it is agape with cracks?
She looks in my face and says, “Nothing, nothing
whatsoever.”
On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and
no cattle come to water. Only some stray goats
from the village browse the scanty grass all day,
and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted
peepal aslant over the mud.
You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a shimool,
and the morning wears on.
Tell me, for whom do you wait?
She looks in my face and says, “No one, no one
at all!”
20
KACHA AND DEVAYANI
Young Kacha came from Paradise to learn the secret
of immortality from a Sage who taught the Titans,
and whose daughter Devayani fell in love with him.
The time has come for me to take leave, Devayani;
I have long sat at your father’s feet, but to-day
he completed his teaching. Graciously allow me
to go back to the land of the Gods whence I came.
