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.

WHEN THEY came and clamoured and surrounded me they hid thee from
my sight.
I thought I would bring to thee my gifts last of all.
Now that the day has waned, and they have taken their dues and left me alone,
I see thee standing at the door.
But I find I have no gift remaining to give, and I hold both my hands up to thee.

MAIDEN, THY beauty is like a fruit
which is yet to mature,
tense with an unyielding secret