Drop me from a cloud on Ashai Bagh bridge,

Where, ten feet under my nose,

I may see the Dal and Nagin—eternal

Sisters of fathomless repose—meet

Below the awning of the bridge;

Where, bending over, the sentient

Eye of a frisky fish may look back

At me, askance, smile, and shake with

Merry abndon a silver-backed exploit

Contemptuous of a net, however adroit.

Where saucer-like lotus leaves skim

Upon the waters, suggesting how

One may be waterborne but not wet.

.

Where, looming over the lakes, the

Shankaracharya and Hari Parbat mounts

And the Maqdoom Sab and Chatti Padshahi

Shrines in secular-spiritual unison

Enact an idea so grand that

The earth, the sky, the waters,

Define a seamless consummation

Of the  conglomerate that makes  creation.

 

Then, when the shadows fall, and the

Swallows twitter home among the hills

in symphonic battalions,

I will  know again the song that once

Made of my being a delighted thing.

 

Let my face yet again become indistinguishable

From the immensity of timeless space.

 

There among the pregnant swamps  of carpeted

Foliage live wizened men, women,

And apple-faced children whose eyes,

However witness everyday to sufferings

Without aid or parallel,  ooze an indifference

To hate unavailable among those

Who sulk where I live in dessicated wait.

 

Denizens of a valley of undiminished

Inward glow, the more they are put

To the sword of authority, the more

Readily they turn the sword to love.

 

Is this an idle l boast propelled

By retrograde age? I think not.

Rather an epiphany that comes,

If it comes, when all has been

Seen and  lived, when the soul

Resurfaces to heal the bruises

Inflicted upon her by the

Expedient frenzy of splintered strivings

That, crassly, deny the whole.

 

At Ashai Bagh bridge, all comes

Together in a climate of  oneness,

Defying the mere passing weather

Of  motion without a universal  goal.

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