ON THIS SIDE of the water there is no landing; the girls do not come here to fetch water; the land along its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a noisy flock of saliks dig their nests in the steep bank under whose frown the fisher-boats find no shelter You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning wears on. Tell me what you do on this bank so dry that it is agape with cracks? She looks in my face and says, 'Nothing, nothing whatsoever.' On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and no cattle come to water. Only some stray goats from the village browse the scanty grass all day, and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted peepal aslant over the mud. You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a shimool, and the morning wears on. Tell me, for whom do you wait? She looks in my face and says, 'No one, no one at all!'
I HAVE FELT your muffled steps in my blood, Evermoving Past, have seen your hushed countenance in the heart of the garrulous day. You have come to write the unfinished stories of our fathers in unseen script on the pages of our destiny; You lead back to life the unremembered designs for the shaping of new images. Is not the restless Present itself a crowd of your own visions Flung up like a constellation from the abyss of dumb night?
