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.