Stretching themselves, filling their lungs.
War
Amid the darkness, resonant now, Quiverings of white wings have come awake:
Already they brush against the walls of silence.
Even from your eyes, stony Idol, have begun to fall
Those bitter drops that distill a torn heart's pangs.
Your body wearied with age-long worship
Drags itself with six hands on to its throne,
While from its lurching feet comes the clashing noise,
The clash, clatter of anklets: in your breast like a serpent
Fury uncoils and rears,
Those sable arms dart lightnings.
From the battlefield rise shouts of triumph, Voices of humankind from the slaughter-ground;
In graves and on funeral pyres bones start to life and shriek, Voices of breathing corpses are heard;
From city streets the shouts of the dying come— Cry victory to the Mother, To the great goddess-Victory to Kali, to Deatht
Snowfall
All night long snow fell, kept falling silently-Falling, falling, ail night long on rock and tree and hillside. Then still calm,
Robed in blue light, dawned. Now once more murk gathers;
Soon a breeze will glide, come gliding down the hillsides, Touching boughs of pine trees;
Boughs will bend,
From them slowly, slowly,
Snowf lakes scattering one by one will fall;
Floating from the cloud-reek, through the silent mist, Snow will come afresh.
Far beyond those louring trunks of trees,
Annual of Urdu Studies, #6 69