THE CLOUDS thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to the rainy night. A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a broken-down storm. She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and calls her mad. She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind. She stands at her window looking out into the sky. Her sister, comes to say, 'Mother calls you.' She shakes her head. Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a slap on the back. The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of earth's creation. That ancient cry of nature-her dumb call to unborn life-has reached this child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so there she stands, possessed by eternity!
WHEN OUR farewell moment came, like a low-hanging rain cloud, I had only time to tie a red ribbon on your wrist, while my hands trembled. Today I sit alone on the grass in the season of mahua flowers, with one quivering question in my mind, 'Do you still keep the little red ribbon tied on your wrist?' You went by the narrow road that skirted the blossoming field of flax. I saw that my garland of overnight was still hanging loose from your hair. But why did you not wait till I could gather, in the morning, new flowers for my final gift? I wonder if unaware it dropped on your way,-the garland hanging loose from your hair. Many a song I had sung to you, morning and evening, and the last one you carried in your voice when you went away. You never tarried to hear the one song unsung I had for you alone and for ever. I wonder if, at last, you are tired of my song that you hummed to yourself while walking through the field.
