Poems of Narad

Among the Lilies Singing

And suddenly all seems a darkness,
The flickering light of mind gone out,
Rushing of angry voices, a stream
Of negatives confront the being.

Who is this I ask who speaks
From my mouth, with my tongue,
Lashing out, frustrate, spent,
Blind in a blinded world.

Peace and the heart's delight have fled
Across the borders of the soul,
No sanctuary remains for one
Besieged by grief and torn by death.

The old oak stands shorn of limbs
And I companionless stand by,
Its blackened trunk where borers feast
Once stood so strong and resolute

No gale could tear away a branch,
No force gain entry though its bark,
Indestructible its armoured might.
But fate and chance intervene

And suddenly the strong grow weak.
Three times I have seen cancer's ruin,
Too late the body met the foe.
As the life-force in the oak consumed

The human form eaten away
By a stealthy visitor who came
Unnoticed in the bloom of years
To slowly penetrate the cells.

Can the beautiful be lost,
Effaced from human memory,
Is there a place beyond our time
Where truth invincible resides?

I shall see beyond the grief-torn years
Where the light eternal grows,
My ears attuned to different sounds
As I walk among the lilies singing.