Ras-Purnima
By Miss RAIHANA TYABJI
(Rendered from Hindi by Dilip
Kumar Roy)
O Night of full moon in the sky!
Com'st thou Krishna's love-boat to ply?
Wafting His memories on wings of thine ancient
Beauty and song!
I recall–on an evening like this (when the angel
Audience would throng
On high with their plaudits of joy) how our darling
Liege-lord of light
Whirled with sweet damsels as thou shonest rich
On the, forehead of Night!
And how sepals of shadows lay sleeping like babies
In the lap of our earth,
As their infant dreams to the azure ascending
Sought mystic rebirth
As starry nurslings–and breath of the woodland
O'er-arching the bowers
Dissolved in canopies of cloud while His
laughter
Was echoed by showers.
When hills and the plains lay scorched by the ire
Of the sun-god above,
And hopes all drooped-lo, the twilight descended
With thy lunar love!
And how then we bathed in thy cool's quintessence
Till thou camest to clothe
The world with thy silver saree while Krishna
Sang of His troth.
And how He
would play His magical flutelet
Of resistless call,
And the maidens abandoned all, all they cherished
For their All-in-all!
And how the blue Jumna would babble to hail Him,
Even fledglings would sing,
Forgetful of slumber, their, paeans in chorus
As He danced–our King.!
Hark back to that haunting appeal of the tabor:
“To Brindaban now home,
Immemorial pain
shall be leavened to rapture,–
The hour is
come.
Why weep ‘He is
far off’ who lives in our whisper
And sentinels
sleep
And redeems death’s echoless void with music,
Life’s dews with his deep?”