You brought
me a bunch of marigolds
And a
fragrance filled the air;
I could speak
of a sweeter joy gathered
From your
cheer by the roaming hum,
And your soul
was a fire
I had
cherished in my heart to adore;
My truenesses
thrilled in its blaze
And sight
leaped to grasp the form
In whose gaze
widens an imperious urge.
There was a
time,
Perhaps more
than a hundred years ago,
When,
splendid, you lived in a palace like a queen
And even fed
your swift mares
With rich and
glistening Avena, dipped in honey;
Vari-hued
chandeliers tinged your moods
And I could
even hear soft music,
Could see
from them a symphonic poem
Arush in
every timelessness.
But then as
you rode out in the morning,
You carried
another freedom to win
Newer and
stranger trophies;
You were bold
to desire a vibrant world,
In their
interminable silence
To give to
the dumb gods exuberancy
Of your
laughter, the merriment
Clad in
emerald trees, and the speed of the beasts,
Or else the
passion of your vineyard songs.
One day you
crossed the hinged gate,
And drifted
far, far beyond the garden,
Even beyond
the fabled valley
That vanishes
into a harsh undreaming waste,
As do events into wayward years;
But Zelda, you
were really unmindful
When you
stepped into the grand canyon,
Forsaking
happy lands, wondering
If there’s
sunlessness on the farther side.
Should I call
it a well-intentioned moment
That was
needed for our time to begin,
When there
you first struck the gun-metal gong
And when from
behind the inverted sky
Pealed back
another joyous anthem?
You heard it
so. Yes, I can quite imagine it,
But we felt
the din, the loud din as if
It would
shatter even the sturdiest of our hopes,
Bury them in
eternal death.
You were
charmed by a shadow’s sound,
But I was
asleep so quietly, deathlessly,
That I could
not catch the deer in my dream;
I was stunned
when a nightmare
Seized you
and you screamed wild,
Like a
phantom who in some incoherent agony
Cried as it
reached the engulfing hollow;
Zelda, you
surely were brave and great
To take death
for a husband.
RY Deshpande
18 January
1994
