Sparrows

 

BY R. APPALASWAMI

 

My spirit cleansed in a long spell of sleep,

I feel enlarged by Being’s depth and sweep:

And out into the open freedom-borne,

I breathe the sweet, cool glories of the morn.

Wide fields and trees, far hills and the sky seem

An insubstantial and rich-painted dream.

Stray notes of birds suggest the brush at work,

Retouching and removing faults that lurk.

–And like a poem, long in vision known,

The sun glows with ease into roundness blown.

 

I walk about trusting to chance’s lead– 

(My life’s event aeons ago decreed!)

I come upon a tall lone bamboo-clump

Stuck with green swords aflame with dews; and plump

Sparrows like blossoms shake in a rage of song

And in gay dance millions of moments throng,

Once lived intact from Memory’s crevices:

Intuitions, discoveries, ecstasies–

And from the earth all evil melts away.

And life aye morning-fresh knows no decay

Deaths are strait passes into eternity,

Arid births flood-gates of influent energy.

 

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