Ras-Purnima

By Miss RAIHANA TYABJI

(Rendered from Hindi by Dilip Kumar Roy)

O Night of full moon in the sky!
Com'st thou Krishna's love-boat to ply?
Wafting His memories on wings of thine ancient
Beauty and song!
I recall–on an evening like this (when the angel
Audience would throng
On high with their plaudits of joy) how our darling
Liege-lord of light
Whirled with sweet damsels as thou shonest rich
On the, forehead of Night!

And how sepals of shadows lay sleeping like babies
In the lap of our earth,
As their infant dreams to the azure ascending 
Sought mystic rebirth
As starry nurslings–and breath of the woodland
O'er-arching the bowers
Dissolved in canopies of cloud while His laughter 
Was echoed by showers.

When hills and the plains lay scorched by the ire
Of the sun-god above,
And hopes all drooped-lo, the twilight descended
With thy lunar love!
And how then we bathed in thy cool's quintessence
Till thou camest to clothe
The world with thy silver saree while Krishna
Sang of His troth.

And howHe would playHis magical flutelet
Of resistless call,
And the maidens abandoned all, allthey cherished
For theirAll-in-all!
And howtheblue Jumna would babbleto hail Him,
Even fledglings would sing,
Forgetful of slumber, their, paeans in chorus
As He danced–our King.!

Hark to that hauntingappeal of the tabor:
“To Brindaban now home,
Immemorial painshallbe leavened to rapture,–
The houris come.
Why weep ‘He isfar off’ who lives in our whisper
And sentinelssleep
And redeems death’s echoless void with music,
Life’s dews with his deep?”