The Stag Poem by Amrit Rathi

As usual, with my legs in the water,
I sat chatting with the silvery river,
that mirrored the moving blue sky
like a fleeting dream
in its rolling currents and the gleaming stream.
“I’ll tell you about an incident of today.
It’s about a Stag, the deer
with the beautiful spiraling horns, ”
said the river.

“It was the morning, a beautiful deer
came to me and started drinking water.
As into a mirror, he looked into the water,
and he wondered: ‘what a beauty are my horns!
Is more beautiful anybody ever born? ’
He couldn’t believe.
But just then his glance fell to his legs,
his heart burst with pain, too hard to relieve.
With tears in his eyes,
‘O God! With so beautiful horns, ’
he cried,
‘this is quite unfair;
you gave me such ugly legs;
are you aware? ’

Just then nearby he saw some hounds
barking and running towards him he found.
He ran for his life with lightning speed;
on his legs, he seemed to fly in the air;
the hounds were left quite behind there.
I saw him getting into the forest at last,
with the hounds still chasing after him very fast.
What a wonderful was his speed!
I thought he’d be safe, indeed.

After an hour or so I saw in the sky,
a luminous object was speedily flying by.
It surprisingly called me and said,
‘I am the stag, you remember?
sometime back, chased by the hounds.
My legs were marvelous,
and I left them far behind,
but alas!
my horns got stuck into the bushes.
I tried and tried but failed to unwind
and I was killed:
finally the hounds could find.

Of the horns I was so proud, so conceited,
and they became the very cause of my death;
the ugly legs that I despised, I hated,
up to the end, they saved my life.

O how foolish!
It’s loving the peripheral, and ignoring
what is a really valuable thing!
What an anti-climax!
What a wrong thinking!

In intense pain, in a flash, I realized
the real beauty is the beauty of our heart.
All other things are nothing but undoubtedly scant,
and I am an absolute God’s part.
I saw God and me instantaneously as one;
at that moment, he appeared before me,
and he called me to heaven.

So I am going to the heaven,
Good-bye dear friend! ’
with a luminous trail of light behind,
he then spiraled up in ascent.

'Very interesting”
I said, and thanked the river,
and made for my house,
a lot many thoughts wobbling like fever.

Copyright © reserved by the author