Four Poems

I could never have believed her dead
When they carried her along the afternoon street,
Followed by mourners, themselves so purified,
That their bare, unhurried, unhesitant feet

Seemed to tread on air. And two or three in a closed
Slow-pacing car, sitting erect, and gazing straight ahead,
Seeing nothing. The traffic made way; passers-by paused.
But I could never, never believe her dead.

Beautiful and calm, her face held up
To the stooping sun, beautiful, open,
Full and whole she was like a fruit just ripened,

Without embarrassment, effort, or hope,
No longer waiting for something to happen,
But final, perfected, ready to drop.

The rains have come, and frogs are full of glee.
They sing in chorus, in deep, jubilant voices.

Nothing to fear today: no drought, no dearth of worms,
Nor serpent’s jaw or stones of wanton boys.

Cloudlike, the grasses thicken; in the fields the lush waters stand;
Louder leaps their hour of brief immortality.

They have no necks, but their throats are rich and swollen;
And O, what sleek bodies, what cold gemlike eyes!

Eyes staring upwards, fixed in meditation,
Ecstatic, lidless, like rishis’ gazing on God.

The rain has ceased, the shadows slant,
Hymnlike floats their singing, on the slow, attentive air.

Now dies the day in silence, but a somber drone
Perforates the twilight; the thin sky leans to listen.

Darkness and rain; and we are warm in bed;
Yet one unwearied phrase mingles in our sleep —

The final sloka of the mystic chanting,
The croak, croak, croak of the last fanatic frog.

Surangama, do you remember that little room?
The blue sky poured in at the window, and the stormy wind
blew to the swing of the sea.
Do you remember?

The sea dancing with its million waves opened out
from horizon to horizon,
and the little room grew delirious with the shouting
and shattering of the waxes.
Do you remember?

Ah, we were clamorous, we were drunken with each other.
We were the storm that filled the horizons.

Many a time did the broken moon return to us sawing the black
sky with light and scattering the crowd of stars,
and often on narrow nights did the moon creep stealthily up
the sky, drawing up the sea in a flood-tide
and in a blind surge of blood-tide drowning us.
Do you remember, Surangama, do you remember?

We were torn by the arrows of a hundred insolent suns,
and a hundred days we blotted out with kisses,
and gaily we killed the infant light at dawn
in that little tumultuous room, do you remember?

We had the swing of the sea in our blood when, at the end
of night, we brought the dead moon back to life.
We had the steps of the storm in our heartheat when, gaily
we killed the savage infant suns.
We were swept away in a blind surge, in a fathomless flood of kisses.
Do you remember, Surangama, do you remember?

Lord, you have granted to each his kingdom:
In the jungles of Bengal the flaming tiger,
The eagle astraddle on the Alpine crystal,
The great, hot whales in icy oceans,
These have their kingdoms, and not only these.

The buffalo neck-deep in the washerman’s bog,
The full-throated frog, the fly of pestilence,
The crow in the cloud on a windless day —
Each has his kingdom none else can reach.

Lord, in your world of freedom’s dominions
Am I, the maker of song, alone
Condemned to the daily bread and the grinding
Self-repeating wheel of the moments?
Or have I, like the race horse and lap dog, forfeited
My kingdom for another, a crafty master?