Poems of Narad

Hymn to My Mother

O my mother could I have only seen
The soul that dwelt within your wasted frame,
Might I have glimpsed a visage great, a queen
In former births so recognized, your name

Majestic sung in choral odes of love,
Arpeggios struck upon a golden lute
Within the cloister of a scented grove
Divine, where Krishna plays His silver flute.

I only saw the coarsened outer mould
And could not pierce the veils that screened your face
Nor share your pain as you grew quickly old
And cancer gripped your cells in fierce embrace.

O Mother I confess such ignorance
Of life and all the joys that lie behind
The masks we don for each experience
To cross the guarded check-posts of the mind

And break into the country of the few.
Perhaps in time new sight shall recognize
The splendour that only at death I glimpsed in you
And I shall bow with wonder in my eyes.