STRUCK WITH the curse in mid-wave of your tumultuous passion,

your life stilled into a stone, clean, cool and impassive.

You took your sacred bath of dust, plunging deep into the

primitive peace of the earth.

You lay down in the dumb immense where faded days drop, like dead

flowers with seeds, to sprout again into new dawns.

You felt the thrill of the sun's kiss with the roots of grass and

trees that are like infant's fingers clasping at mother's breast.

In the night, when the tired children of dust came back to the

dust, their rhythmic breath touched you with the large and placid motherliness of the earth.

Wild weeds twined round you their bonds of flowering intimacy.

You were lapped by the sea of life whose ripples are the leaves

flutter, bees' flight, grasshoppers' dance and tremor of moths' wings.

For ages you kept your ear to the ground, counting the footsteps

of the unseen comer, at whose touch silence flames into music.

Woman, the sin has stripped you naked, the curse has washed you

pure, you have risen into a perfect life.

The dew of that unfathomed night trembles on your eyelids, the

mosses of ever-green years cling to your hair.

You have the wonder of new birth and the wonder of old time in

your awakening.

You are young as the new-born flowers and old as the hills.