II. 95. ya tarvar men ek pakheru ON THIS TREE is a bird: it dances in the joy of life. None knows where it is: and who knows what the burden of its music may be? Where the branches throw a deep shape, there does it have its nest: and it comes in the evening and flies away in the morning, and says not a word of that which it means. None tell me of this bird that sings within me. It is neither coloured nor colourless: it has neither form nor outline: It sits in the shadow of love. It dwells within the Unattainable, the Infinite, and the Eternal; and no one marks when it comes and goes. Kabir says: 'O brother Sadhu! deep is the mystery. Let wise men seek to know where rests that bird.'
(Translated from the Bengali of Dwijendralal Roy) 'COME, MOON, come down, kiss my darling on the forehead,' cries the mother as she holds the baby girl in her lap while the moon smiles as it dreams. There come stealing in the dark the vague fragrance of the summer and the night-bird's songs from the shadow-laden solitude of the mango-grove. At a far-away village rises from a peasant's flute a fountain of plaintive notes, and the young mother, sitting on the terrace, baby in her lap, croons sweetly, 'Come, moon, come down, kiss my darling on the forehead.' Once she looks up at the light of the sky, and then at the light of the earth in her arms, and I wonder at the placid silence of the moon. The baby laughs and repeats her mother's call, 'Come, moon, come down.' The mother smiles, and smiles the moonlit night, and I, the poet, the husband of the baby's mother, watch this picture from behind, unseen.
