To-night in million-voiced London I
Was lonely as the million-pointed sky
Until your single voice. Ah! So the sun
Peoples all heaven, although he be but one.
The taste
of rain
- Why kneel?
When gaily the Emperor toured the south
Contrary to every warning,
His whole empire cut brocades,
Half for wheel-guards, half for sails.
These-the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,
In which he reads his blessing or his curse-
Are syllables with which God speaks His name
In the vast utterance of the universe
The sun has wept rose in the shell of your ears,
The world has rolled white from your back,
Your thighs:
The sea has stained rust at the crimson of your breasts,
And Man had bled black at your sovereign side.
The story of my life is full of grief;
It is neither tellable nor to be spoken about.
Within the furnace that is my forlorn heart, O Zia!
Is hidden a fire, hungry and quiet!
The steed of mind speedeth over the sky,
And, in the twinkling of the eye,
A hundred thousand leagues traverseth he.
Yet a man of discrimination can control
the curvetting steed,
And, on the wheels of praana and apraana, guide
his chariot aright.
This is the soldier brave enough to tell
The glory-dazzled world that `war is hell':
Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife,
And rides through hell to save his country's life.
When we are dead, some Hunting-boy will pass
And find a stone half-hidden in tall grass
And grey with age: but having seen that stone
(Which was your image), ride more slowly on.
Nature, our father and mother,
gave us all we have got.
The state, our elder brother,
swipes the lot.
