A Name, A Robe And The Light

A Name, A Robe And The Light

If you happen to hear a note rise and fall
in the songs I dream and sing
Don't let the sadness fool you.
You will never know when I will come back again
and lash against your walls.
There is an unrest I cannot quiet,
for it does not belong to me.
It will disrupt all covers
and break out into the sea
like a wave held back  long
from its point of origin.
I will pull down masks, pull down the walls of memory.
I will not let you go to sleep before you hear and speak .
Somewhere lurks a spark
that does not die,
in spite of the best or the worst you do
and in spite of my silent will to oblige,
it will show and grow in the dark
and when it's sunlight it will come
in a different stream , a different flow.
I live in the light
and not in the name.
I will don a different name and don a different robe
and you will know me by my light and not by the name you know.

The Sun And The Snow

The Sun and the Snow

The desert winds blow

And the dust flies here into my eyes

To make me cry

Somewhere in a far continent

The snow begins to melt

And brings tears to the eyes

Of a woman worrying about the cold

And the birds in her sky refuse to fly.

Her heart shivers and my heart burns;

Her pain dislodged,

Finds a place to nest

In my empty corner of the veranda.

My summer has begun,

But her winter seems to have no end.

My nights hear the plaintive notes

Sung by a woman on her heart-strings, taut, overwrought to the point of snapping

All of a sudden.

How will the woman of the snow

Hear what the desert has to say?

Deserts too,are cold by night,

Whether it’s winter or a summer bright.

The sun here or the snow there,

Nights can be cold and harsh.

Listen to the notes which the planet sings

To soothe her children when they are deep in sleep

The burden of the earth’s song has not changed.

Her children sleep,

Wrapped in her arms , hearing nothing,

Seeing nothing but dreams;

A blanket of slumber covers their fears and they sleep

Their sorrow gone and peace restored

Even while battles rage and famines wreck

The sleep of the planet in the far continents

Till it’s time for one to wake and the other to sleep,

A constant vigil held for one by the other.

The planet has built-in mechanisms for peace.

Somewhere in a far continent and the dust flies

Dark is the night

Dark the river, dark the night

And dark is me bending over

Your soul in the dark

Of the love it hides.

Dark is the whisper, dark the breeze

That carries your voice

Bodiless, on the wings of the night.

Dark is the waiting without a clue

And dark is the rock where I brood

Darkly over the mystery of your absence.

Dark is the swamp where the shadows have sunk

Dark the interludes, dark the tide

Over which rides the soul of the night.

Dark is the froth

Now foaming at the mouth

Of the abyss where sleep is sweeping over all.

Silly Bird


That was my first understanding of
the dehumanized, neutral unkindness of that Dame
who some call Fate and some call Nature.
I saw her in one of her many aspects
as she came in the guise of a killer
and I failed to see through her
though she is always walking alongside  life
like a shadow and the body
matching step in a stride
with always a thin wall separating the two
like a mask and the face beneath.

That was my first understanding of the truth
of what we call life,
which brought me down with the force of a violence
and I knocked my feet on the hardened ground
leaving the dreams of love and beauty
in splinters all around.

Bird, yes, a bird : that's what it is--this naive heart !
What did it know of the hunter lurking in the dark
casting nets all around, spelling certainty of doom for the bird in the sky?

The day when the truth will dawn on the bird
it will lose its song, fold its wings
and drown in sorrow silently.

But I doubt, is the bird really in the dark
about what its fate has in store?
I know, the bird is aware.
It's just that the bird is hiding
in the shades of temporary joy.
the bird has seen the Law of Nature
not in the end of it all,
but in the murmur of the streams,
in the wild abandon of the peacock's dance,
in the resonance of the thunder of clouds,
and in the immensity of the ocean's tides.

This little madness, away from the sadness
is welcome O foolish bird !
For without your silliness
this world will have to go without a song,
the howl of the wind will stop.
This world of Nature will miss it all
and go back to its silence of death again;
all will be the unvibrating cosmos again.

Caravan

Caravan

The days gone by
leave what they must leave behind---the shadows !
When they take with them everything else
why must they leave behind the pain?
Why do they leave the hours, the moments
and the long interludes
in the empty hands which cannot even hold water?

I have seen the moon come down on earth
with the light of the night in his arms.
My paths were sprinkled with the pearls
that the night in her gladness had graciously cast.
Every destination was within my reach
and every horizon was my goal---the days gone by !

Why does time toss and turn
and with every turn
bring a gift of sorrow or of joy?

Now I am well-aware and sealed
and I do not stay long with either.
I have had too much of the shifting of the sands
and yet all is anchored deep
and whenever life comes back in a tide
I am swayed.

Be still, you wicked companion,
let me match my step with time.
If I linger long
I may find the caravan gone ahead too far.