Gorvachove, Keonjhar, 9 September 2024
The dark night is not dark enough.
The silence of the world is never complete.
Smashed to the heart,
We must clutch to our joys
Small and large,
Real, imagined, and imperfect,
Till even our greatest sadness
must give way.
The world, changing and impermanent,
is beautiful nonetheless:
The wind sighs, the rain falls,
The paddy fields are green,
The cedar groves lie quiet
by blue springs, near snow-clad mountains.
In frantic cities,
late at night in shabby homes,
or in the worn-out benches of parks,
And in noisy subways,
The young and old, still hopeful,
Unlatch the doors of their heart
to meet the ones,
Who greet them in their dreams,
To hold trembling hands
with love or something like it.
And briefly, ah so briefly,
We too have walked together,
Under the diamond stars,
Talking and laughing,
As leaves fell on wind-swept roads.
The dark night is not dark enough.
The silence of the world is never complete.
In the darkest of paths
We carry like fireflies, our own lights.
And in the stillness of our hearts
Echoes forever, faint but unwavering,
The song that we must croon for ourselves.
