7.
"Not death, but a summing-up of life,"
Said the village patriarch, as we watched him
Treasure a patch of winter sunshine
On his string cot in the courtyard.
I remember his wisdom.
And I remember faces.
For it"s faces I remember best.
The people were poor, and the patriarch said:
"I have heard it told that the sun
Sets in splendour in Himalaya-
But who can eat sunsets?"
The patriarch was old in years,
But some grew old at their mother"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
Perhaps, if I"d stayed longer,
I would have yearned for creature comforts.
We were hungry sometimes, eating wild berries
Or slyly milking another"s goat,
Or catching small fish in the river. . . .
But I did not long for home.
Could I have grown up a village boy,
Grazing sheep and cattle, while the Collected Works
Of W. Shakespeare lay gathering dust
In Dehra? Who knows? But it was nice
Of my stepfather to send his office manager
Into the mountains to bring me home!
Manohar.
He called goodbye and waved
As I looked back from the bend in the road.
Bright boy on the mountainside,
Waving to me, calling, and I"ve loved you
All these years and looked for you everywhere,
In the mountains, in crowds at distant places,