No rain in the wind,
a day without evening;
and the open sky was filled out
like a blue lake.
Ah! the blessing of another chance!
The imagined callers arrived,
bearing no fear of being chased away.

 

To the fore, there were three of them,
wearing heads of horns;
another and another followed, steadily looking along:
sagacious, striking, eye-catching,
grey rugged extents in darling white stockings;
flowering in the tamed wilderness – 
sacrosanct stars in kinship with the sun,
all looking down at me from their summit,
giving me the do-what-you-will shiny stares.

 

From each shade of thought,
the artful visitants veered in unison,
their undeceiving bliss covered
the atoning slopes and my world;
step by step, tuft by tuft,
they ripped out the fresh-leaf colour grass,
without seeming to put much labour
on their ample gait.

I never heard their voices,
or perceived the hour,
as time whispered to carry them,
to their cloistered kingdom.
All I know is: they filled my eyes
with such celebrations,
that a ring of light recalls me,
exactly to those viewpoints,
where a native-nobility had come to graze.

2005

                          

Geeta Chhabra