At Evening

Far along the way it was evening—
and at the turn of the road,
eyes like the rain-bird’s longing gaze.
 
A woman in white,
with an orange-bordered sari,
stood at her doorway,
sleep still upon her lashes,
a quiet smile playing at her lips.
 
On one side, green fields;
on the other, the city’s steel;
on one flank a dinghy drifts on water,
the traveller’s step falters—
in the delayed joy of a tranquil face,
the wave breaks through his weariness.
 
Ahead, an endless darkness,
a net of unknown fate;
a luckless boatman
finds dry land in the whirlpool.
 
The traveller remembers home,
the hearth,
yet wanders in the maze of roads,
haunted by memories left far behind.
 
In the hush of evening,
in a forgotten spring,
the woman comes to sit in the courtyard.
Once, in the mind, there was a bird
that tricked life in the dark.
 
The sky, a kohl-black blue—
come, let us paint the sun;
already the lamp is lit
at the basil altar,
its symbol of light
journeying to the farthest edge.
 
When the traveller loses
the signposts of the road,
loses the rhythm to a mirage’s shadow,
the half-light of the way calls to him.
 
An ordinary woman in saffron-yellow
draws her veil,
blows the conch for blessing.
Behind, in the traveller’s grave,
lingers the spell of ancient joy.
 
The monk starts at his own
long shadow,
stretching back upon the road he left;
he walks on,
leaving the past behind—
yet drawn by evening’s inexpressible tug,
toward the nectar-path of the twilight lamp.
 
Will the going end in arrival?