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Sarojini Naidu
Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is calling
To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
And why should I stay behind?
gold-coral leaves
too rich and transient
to hold this autumn day
loud shots of hunters
I shrink for graceful deer
radios shoot the sky
cold - death of sweaty yellow heat
reaches to snow
sun pales vanishes
sap tree life still
kicking against
frost
I am the Minister of Leaves who writes memos in re:
deciduous policy. I strike compromises
between the forest and the trees.
Someone in the Ministry is singing a song,
a green song as insistent and calm as
succulent leaves in the Amazon Basin.
I am promoted beyond bureaucracies
of my own beliefs, am carried
on melody to ancient stands of timber.
Leaves fall like words
on a page, punctuations
in time.
Summers passing, flights
of geese, the
loosening of ties.
Orange ambiguity
leaf and butterfly
fluttering.
One to fall, crinkle
and wither, the other
freedom and flight.
The silence-leaves fallen from Life,
Older than dream or pain, —
Are they my passing ghost?
Leaves blown,
Birds flown away.
I wander in and out the Hall of Autumn.
Turn me to my yellow leaves,
I am better satisfied;
There is something in me grieves--
That was never born, and died.
Let me be a scarlet flame
On a windy autumn morn,
I who never had a name,
Nor from breathing image born.
From the margin let me fall
Where the farthest stars sink down,
And the void consumes me,--all
In nothingness to drown.
Let me dream my dream entire,
Withered as an autumn leaf--
Let me have my vain desire,
Vain--as it is brief.
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me;
But the stars above my head
Burn in white and delicate red,
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
I who was content to be
But a silken-singing tree,
But a rustle of delight
In the wistful heart of night--
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew.
Blinded by a leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down--
But the little leaves that die
Have left me room to see the sky;
The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.
Our love is dying like the grass,
And we who kissed grow coldly kind,
Half glad to see our old love pass
Like leaves along the wind.
I shall remember only these leaves falling
Small and incessant in the still air,
Yellow leaves on the dark green water resting
And the marble Venus there--
Is she pointing to her breasts or trying to hide them?
There is no god to care.
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
And its reflection seems
Lost in the mass of leaves and unavailing
As a dream lost among dreams;
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
A dream lost among dreams.