Gaurav Sagar’s Reviews > Selected Poems > Status Update

Behind the innocent trees
old Fate is slowly forming
her taciturn face
Wrinkles travel thither
Here a bird screams and there
a furrow of pain
shoots from the hard sooth-saying mouth

Oh and the almost lovers
with their unvaledictory smiles-
their destiny setting and rising above them
constellational
night-enraptured
Not yet proffering itself to their experience
it still remains
hovering in heaven's paths
an airy form

Praising, that's it! As a praiser and blesser
he came like the ore from the taciturn mine.
Came with his heart, oh, transient presser,
for men, of a never-exhaustible wine.

Voice never falls him for things lacking lustre,
sacred example will open his mouth.
All becomes vineyard, all becomes cluster,
warmed by his sympathy's ripening south.

Earth, is it not just this that you want: to arise
invisibly in us? Is not your dream
to be one day invisible? Earth! invisible@
What is your urgent command, if not transformation?
Earth, you darling, I will! Oh, believe me, you need no more of your spring-times to win me over: a single one,
ah, one is already more than blood can endure.
Beyond all names I am yours, and have been for ages.

Don't be shamed, when the dead brush against you,
those other dead, who held out to the end.
(What, after all, does end mean?) Exchange glances
peacefully with them, as is customary,
and have no fear of being conspicuous
through carrying the burden of our grief.
The big words from those ages when as yet
happening was visible are not for us.
Who talks of victory? To endure is all.

She, so belov'd, that from a single lyre
more mourning rose than from all women-mourners,-
that a whole world of mourning rose, wherein
all things were once more present: wood and vale
and road and hamlet, field and stream and beast,-
and that around this world of mourning turned,
even as around the other earth,a sun
and a whole silent heaven full of stars,
a heaven of mourning with disfigured stars:
she,so beloved.

In a Foreign Park
Borgeby-Gard

Two paths. They're speeding no one's business.
One, though, at times, when pensively alone,
lets you go on. You feel you've lost your bearing;
till suddenly you find you're once more sharing
the solitary round-plot with the stone
and once more reading on it: Baroness
Brite Sophie- and once more with your finger
outfeeling the dilapidated year

Like Hail on standing harvests he descended.
What would ye promise God? On every side
uncounted gods await what ye decide.
Choose, and be crushed by Him ye have offended.

And then, with arrogance till then unspoken:
I and my house have been and are his bride.

Whereat they all cried: Help us, give some token,
that this hard choice may not bring punishment.

The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
as though above were withering farthest gardens;
they fall with a denying attitude.

And night by night, down into solitude,
the heavy earth falls far from every star.

We are falling. The hand's falling too-
all have this falling-sickness none withstands.

And yet there's One whose gently-holding hands
this universal falling can't fall through

The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
as though above were withering farthest gardens;
they fall with a denying attitude.

And night by night, down into solitude,
the heavy earth falls far from every star.

We are falling. The hand's falling too-
all have this falling-sickness none withstands.

And yet there's One whose gently-holding hands
this universal falling can't fall through.