13


Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?

Let my heart touch yours and kiss the pain out of your silence.

The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour, that love may
build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted by this solitary
lamp.

We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs of lips must play
on by turns--for crown, only one garland to bind my hair after I have put
it on your forehead.

Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our bed on the floor; and one
kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our small boundless world.

14


All that I had I gave to you, keeping but the barest veil of reserve.

It is so thin that you secretly smile at it and I feel ashamed.

The gust of the spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of
my own heart moves it as the waves move their foam.

My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.

This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem
on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent
grace.

15


I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.

It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of
that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh
offering, dressed in a new robe?

My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and
therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young
grass and now that of the winter rice.

To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to
my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and
it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.

16


I thought I would write love's words in their own colour; but that lies
deep in the heart, and tears are pale.

Would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless?

I thought I would sing love's words to their own tune, but that sounds only
in my heart, and my eyes are silent.

Would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?

17


In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.

It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the
stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars
then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing
it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the
words hung back, when you were beside me.

18


The night deepens and the dying flame flickers in the lamp.

I forgot to notice when the evening--like a village girl who has filled her
pitcher at the river a last time for that day--closed the door on her
cabin.

I was speaking to you, my love, with mind barely conscious of my
voice--tell me, had it any meaning? Did it bring you any message from
beyond life's borders?

For now, since my voice has ceased, I feel the night throbbing with
thoughts that gaze in awe at the abyss of their dumbness.

19


When we two first met my heart rang out in music, "She who is eternally
afar is beside you for ever."

That music is silent, because I have grown to believe that my love is only
near, and have forgotten that she is also far, far away.

Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the
mist of our daily habits.

On shy summer nights, when the breeze brings a vast murmur out of the
silence, I sit up in my bed and mourn the great loss of her who is beside
me. I ask myself, "When shall I have another chance to whisper to her words
with the rhythm of eternity in them?"

Wake up, my song, from thy languor, rend this screen of the familiar, and
fly to my beloved there, in the endless surprise of our first meeting!

20


Lovers come to you, my Queen, and proudly lay their riches at your feet:
but my tribute is made up of unfulfilled hopes.

Shadows have stolen across the heart of my world and the best in me has
lost light.

While the fortunate laugh at my penury, I ask you to lend my failings your
tears, and so make them precious.


I bring you a voiceless instrument.

I strained to reach a note which was too high in my heart, and the string
broke.

While masters laugh at the snapped cord, I ask you to take my lute in your
hands and fill its hollowness with your songs.

21


The father came back from the funeral rites.

His boy of seven stood at the window, with eyes wide open and a golden
amulet hanging from his neck, full of thoughts too difficult for his age.

His father took him in his arms and the boy asked him, "Where is mother?"

"In heaven," answered his father, pointing to the sky.


At night the father groaned in slumber, weary with grief.

A lamp dimly burned near the bedroom door, and a lizard chased moths on the
wall.

The boy woke up from sleep, felt with his hands the emptiness in the bed,
and stole out to the open terrace.

The boy raised his eyes to the sky and long gazed in silence. His
bewildered mind sent abroad into the night the question, "Where is heaven?"

No answer came: and the stars seemed like the burning tears of that
ignorant darkness.

22


She went away when the night was about to wane.

My mind tried to console me by saying, "All is vanity."

I felt angry and said, "That unopened letter with her name on it, and this
palm-leaf fan bordered with red silk by her own hands, are they not real?"

The day passed, and my friend came and said to me, "Whatever is good is
true, and can never perish."

"How do you know?" I asked impatiently; "was not this body good which is
now lost to the world?"


As a fretful child hurting its own mother, I tried to wreck all the
shelters that ever I had, in and about me, and cried, "This world is
treacherous."

Suddenly I felt a voice saying--"Ungrateful!"

I looked out of the window, and a reproach seemed to come from the
star-sprinkled night,--"You pour out into the void of my absence your faith
in the truth that I came!"