Rising and Falling

In the dusk of gleams and glimpses she remained

in the depth of my being never opening her veils
in the morning light, and she, folded in my final
song, will be my last gift to you, my God!

Though words have wooed, yet failed to win her
with persuasion stretching its eager arms in vain.
I have roamed from country to country keeping her in
the cave of my heart and around her I have risen and fallen.

She reigned over my thoughts and actions
my slumbers and dreams though dwelling alone
and apart while many have knocked at my door
and asked for her but turning away in despair.

There is none in the world who ever saw

her face to face as she remains
in her loneliness waiting
waiting to be recognised by you.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 66

Henry Victor          28.12.2012

 

One in Many New

You have made me known to friends
not known earlier, and given me seats
in homes not my own, bringing the distant
near and making a brother of a stranger.

Yet, I am edgy at heart to leave the familiar
shelter due to my forgetting that the old
abides in the new, and the new was there
in the old, and you will never desert me.

Through birth and death, in this world
or in other, wherever you lead me, it is you
the same, the one companion of my endless life
linking the unfamiliar with a heart filled with joy.

When I know you, then, none I call alien
or,  with that gen, I find, no door is ever shut;
grant me ever, therefore, the bliss that comes
from the touch of that one in the play of many.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 63

Henry Victor          25.10.2012