Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Etch my name, in thy heart, dear
Caressing in quiet love !
The melody overflowing mine,
Attune your anklets in its rhythm, fine.
Encage my humming bird,
With love and care, in your
Castle’s courtyard.
Don’t forget to tie my band,
To your bangles of gold.
Honour a place in you hairdo
A forgotten flower from my vine.
A shy mark of pious vermilion,
Let, in my memory, add,
To the elegance of your hairline.
Adorn the delights of my mind
With your fragrance.
****** my avid life and death,
In your perfectly magnificent stance!

A traveller am I on the roads of the world. In my wanderings
have I seen lands famed in story and shorn of all glory today.
I have seen the unheeded ruins of insolent might - its banner
of victory is gone with the wind, like boisterous laughter stilled
into silence by a sudden thunder-clap.

I have found stupendous pride humbled to the dust, dust
on which the beggar spreads his tattered rags, dust on which the
traveller leaves the print of weary steps to be effaced by the
ceaseless march of unnumbered feet.