Dawn

On a wind-swept August morning like this

I wake up full of the deepest gratitude.

I tell myself no other dawn will be thus:

The same azure skies, this slant of the sun.

My days have gone, one after the other,

Following an invisible piper;

But I still want to trace my signature

On the canvas of the beautiful world;

 

What is it with growing old and gray men?

This delayed appreciation of life?

Despite all the sorrows and imperfections

This wish to see the world a while longer?

 

I pick up a fallen Shiuli flower

From the green grass outside my window;

I hold it on the palm of my hand.

But I cannot close my fist around it

Without crushing the white and orange bloom…

The scent stays long after I’ve dropped it back;

 

Beauty is fleeting.

It flits about in the bushes

Like a lark, twittering.

She cannot sing in captivity.

 

Life is a dew drop on the grass.

It shines for a while.

So beautiful… and so brief;

 

Diptesh Ghosh