MANJERI S. ISVARAN
I opened the mysterious book
that men call Life,
and scanned through it page after page
variously rife
With laughters,
loves, and luminous joys
annal’d starwhite
That whither seem’d
beside the lamp
shedding pale light,
When a sudden crackling, the flame
luridly glowed
and lit the space betwixt the lines
and strongly showed
deceipts, greeds, lusts,
hopes, despairs, hates
in mingled rout–
I shrank aghast: a moth dash’d
past,
the lamp flared out!
–Reprinted from Triveni, Jan.-Feb. 1933