IN THE HAZY LIGHT Poem by Kunwar Narain

Occasionally, when a flower blooms
the whole forest dotes on it
and in no time, flowers fill up
its body and mind, water and land,
its each and every minute.

Then there is the other forest
that did not have a flower
or any talk of it.
Just a question
that a seed in which is encoded
the lineage of a whole tree,
how is it that after coursing through
the many branches and sub-branches,
genres and sub-genres, loops and sub-loops,
sequences and starts, of its development
and reaching its zenith
there is still saved
an unassuming beauty?

Some day
in a wilting voice
it must have said - I have to go now . . .

On bidding farewell
the many angularities of its going
must have changed to analogies, limb-by-limb.
First it must have gone like fragrance
then like form
like sap, like hue
then it must have scattered wing-by-wing
like a kingdom.

But as it went, it must have once
turned back and seen
its own spectral image
left in someone's imagination,
and seeing something even more beautiful
it must have stood speechless
somewhere between earth and sky
a helter-skelter shadow picture
in the hazy light of some folktale.

An incomplete creation
returns to earth again and again
looking for the same listless eyes
that see life as if a dream being effaced
and leave in dreams an ineffaceable life.