POEMS FROM SIXTY POEMS^ (New Poems: 1952-53) THE STONE I have learnt to revel in the stone, Hard, cold, heavy, shapeless, solid stone, To turn away from all that seems to flow Elusively; time, water, blood around the bone; The flare and flux of what 1s merely show For something real like a common stone, Not to be caressed, like flesh, but hard as bonCc I have learnt to love the texture of a stone, Rough or smooth but all unyielding stone, Which splays no facile game of outward show, And holds itself together as a bone; It does not feel the paralysing flow Of everything that is not hard as stone But shares its nature like the hidden bone. *From Sixty Poems (Bombay, 1953). Reprinted by permission of the author