Parched By Pain

My heart is scorched, parched by pain

of many days; for your grace, the rain
is held back from this horizon fiercely naked
not even with the thinnest cover of a soft cloud.

I see not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower;

so please, if it is your will and your wish,
send your angry storm, dark with death and lashes
of lightning, startling thoroughly the sky of my soul.

But call back this pervading silent heat, stagnant

and zealously cruel, burning my heart with dire despair
as on the day of my father’s wrath; so let the cloud
of grace bend low like the tearful look of my mother.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 40

Henry Victor          01.01.2013