My Poems

My poems are like my eye glasses
enabling me to see you, and these songs
have led me from door to door, helping me
feel my soul, searching and touching my world.

It was my songs that taught me lessons I learnt,
showing secret paths, and bringing before my sight
the stars on the skyline of my heart, guiding to mysteries
of pleasure and pain, finally to the gate, end of my journey.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 101

Henry Victor          22.12.2012

Time to Go

Now I have my leave to go my brothers

and sisters, hence, please bid me farewell.
I bow to you all and take my departure
and here I give back the keys of my door.

Now I give up all claims to my house
but ask only for last kind words from you
as we were neighbours for so long
when I received more than I could give.

Now the day has dawned and the lamp

that lit my dark corner is out
for a summons has come to me
and I am ready for my journey.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 93

Henry Victor          23.11.2012

The Signature of Eternity

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
The day when I was not ready for you, Oh my King
you entered my cave, my heart, uninvited and unknown
as one in the common crowd, pressing the ring
of eternity on countless fleeting moments of my life.

Today when by chance I reflect on those minutes
and see your indelible signature laying scattered
in the cosmic dust mixed with the misty memory
of joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.

But you never turn away from my childish play
with dust and mist, or disregard me for my lack of a track,
and I know the foot-steps that I hear in my playroom
are the same as those echoing from one star to another.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 43

Henry Victor          02.11.2012

Search for Eternity

In desperate search, but with hope
I go searching for eternity
in all the corners of my room
and I find her not.

My shack is small and that which leaves
this house is gone never to be regained
but infinite is your mansion, my Master
seeking eternity I have come to your door.

I stand under the golden canopy
of your evening sky
lifting my eyes to your face and see
I have come to the edge of eternity.

Nothing can vanish from this brink;
neither hope, nor happiness
nor the vision of a face
seen through my tears will ever shrink.

Oh Master, please dip my empty life
into that ocean, plunging it into its depth
and let me feel that lost touch
of the spirit of the universe.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 87

Henry Victor          01.11.2012

Unending Time

Time is unending in your hands, my Master
and there is none to count your minutes
as days and nights pass and ages blossom
and fade like flowers even as you wait.

Centuries follow each other perfecting a small
wild flower and with us we have no time to lose
and having no time we must scramble and crawl
for a chance as we are too poor to be late.

It is time that goes by as I give it to every man
critically claiming it, while your altar is empty
of offerings to the last, and at the end of the day I rush
in fear your gate will be shut but to find yet there is time.

Adopted from Tagore’s Gitanjali, poem 82

Henry Victor          31.10.2012