The Sun was up before any of us
I had a notion of
The sun shining on the yellow mounds of rice
I also had a notion of a slanting ray
Of light in the coconut grove
A phosphorescent glow
Or may be a perfect profile
Only I could not see
The bounty of nature
The wondrous melodies
Only could not hear
The soft whisper of the squirrels
The light fall of the brook
Or a forlorn call of the calf
I did have notions of the song of
The Nightingale or the voice of the lovely reaper
I only had thoughts of a vast
Green field, a granary of rice
I felt a sweet satisfaction
Of the wealth of grain and fruit
Of what matter was it to me,
The sorrow of the farmer
The jarring notes of a desolate field
Dry and charred were there
How much I understood nature?
I felt the soft body of a lily
Only a lily or a red rose
How graceful is nature!
I departed with impressions
My mind ridden with images
Like a child’s picture book
Or an art master’s manual
I was thinking of the word pictures
And the verbal images
In vain did I harp on the
Mellifluous notes of the koel
Of what it struck in me
I heard it in an ocean of silence
I felt what I had not seen
The misty region of the mind’s eye
I wanted to follow the
Village brook where it disappeared
In the burrows of the earth
Into a deep secret of the
Palatial universe
I had to stop at the gates.
Stories
May 2017