The Fugitive and Other Poems: The Fugitive III

The Fugitive III

Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for
utterance!

Come in gusts of disquiet where flowers break open and jostle the new
leaves!

Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the
lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming
freedom to the shackled seeds!

Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the
midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort,
reinforce our flagging fight, and conquer death!

I have looked on this picture in many a month of March when the mustard is
in bloom--this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the
rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into
the heart of the village.

I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of
the oar-strokes from a passing boat.

I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great
world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter
with the Eternal Stranger.

The ferry-boat plies between the two villages facing each other across the
narrow stream.

The water is neither wide nor deep--a mere break in the path that enhances
the small adventures of daily life, like a break in the words of a song
across which the tune gleefully streams.

While the towers of wealth rise high and crash to ruin, these villages talk
to each other across the garrulous stream, and the ferry-boat plies between
them, age after age, from seed-time to harvest.

In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the
grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat
in their songs the name which they have fondly given you.

While kings' crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village
huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your
lovers whose names are unrecorded.

In Baby's world, the trees shake their leaves at him, murmuring verses in
an ancient tongue that dates from before the age of meaning, and the moon
feigns to be of his own age--the solitary baby of night.

In the world of the old, flowers dutifully blush at the make-believe of
faery legends, and broken dolls confess that they are made of clay.

_My world_, when I was a child, you were a little girl-neighbour, a loving
timid stranger.

Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering me toys and
flowers and shells.

Next you coaxed me away from my work, you tempted me into the land of the
dusk or the weedy corner of some garden in mid-day loneliness.

At length you told me stories about bygone times, with which the present
ever longs to meet so as to be rescued from its prison in the moment.

How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you,
sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner
in answer to the beckoning blue of the sky!

I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in
the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I
seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear
voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.

When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from
the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from
the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in
the first morning of existence.

My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting
how twilight was deepening into dark. Suddenly light stirred across the
gloom and touched me as with a finger.

I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a
child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had
been secretly dropped in at my window. And ever since my heart is breaking
to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers--great as
her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.

The clouds thicken till the morning light seems like a bedraggled fringe to
the rainy night.

A little girl stands at her window, still as a rainbow at the gate of a
broken-down storm.

She is my neighbour, and has come upon the earth like some god's rebellious
laughter. Her mother in anger calls her incorrigible; her father smiles and
calls her mad.

She is like a runaway waterfall leaping over boulders, like the topmost
bamboo twig rustling in the restless wind.

She stands at her window looking out into the sky.

Her sister comes to say, "Mother calls you." She shakes her head.

Her little brother with his toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to
play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a
slap on the back.

The first great voice was the voice of wind and water in the beginning of
earth's creation.

That ancient cry of nature--her dumb call to unborn life--has reached this
child's heart and leads it out alone beyond the fence of our times: so
there she stands, possessed by eternity!

The kingfisher sits still on the prow of an empty boat, while in the
shallow margin of the stream a buffalo lies tranquilly blissful, its eyes
half closed to savour the luxury of cool mud.

Undismayed by the barking of the village cur, the cow browses on the bank,
followed by a hopping group of saliks hunting moths.

I sit in the tamarind grove, where the cries of dumb life congregate--the
cattle's lowing, the sparrows' chatter, the shrill scream of a kite
overhead, the crickets' chirp, and the splash of a fish in the water.

I peep into the primeval nursery of life, where the mother Earth thrills at
the first living clutch near her breast.

At the sleepy village the noon was still like a sunny midnight when my
holidays came to their end.

My little girl of four had followed me all the morning from room to room,
watching my preparations in grave silence, till, wearied, she sat by the
doorpost strangely quiet, murmuring to herself, "Father must not go!"

This was the meal hour, when sleep daily overcame her, but her mother had
forgotten her and the child was too unhappy to complain.

At last, when I stretched out my arms to her to say farewell, she never
moved, but sadly looking at me said, "Father, you must not go!"

And it amused me to tears to think how this little child dared to fight the
giant world of necessity with no other resource than those few words,
"Father, you must not go!"

Take your holiday, my boy; there are the blue sky and the bare field, the
barn and the ruined temple under the ancient tamarind.

My holiday must be taken through yours, finding light in the dance of your
eyes, music in your noisy shouts.

To you autumn brings the true holiday freedom: to me it brings the
impossibility of work; for lo! you burst into my room.

Yes, my holiday is an endless freedom for love to disturb me.

In the evening my little daughter heard a call from her companions below
the window.

She timidly went down the dark stairs holding a lamp in her hand, shielding
it behind her veil.

I was sitting on my terrace in the star-lit night of March, when at a
sudden cry I ran to see.

Her lamp had gone out in the dark spiral staircase. I asked, "Child, why
did you cry?"

From below she answered in distress, "Father, I have lost myself!"

When I came back to the terrace under the star-lit night of March, I looked
at the sky, and it seemed that a child was walking there treasuring many
lamps behind her veils.

If their light went out, she would suddenly stop and a cry would sound from
sky to sky, "Father, I have lost myself!"

The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the
city dust.

A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a
living fire waiting for its moths.

Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under
the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor
screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother
who sits in the world's inner shrine.

I remember the scene on the barren heath--a girl sat alone on the grass
before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.

Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her
employment had no importance.

In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its
perpetual silliness.

She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed
to delight it the more.

She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending
doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms,
laughed, and pressed it to her heart.

He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a
dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.

In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun,
where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.

The world passes by--a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to
pasture, a laden cart to the distant market--and the mother hopes that some
least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.

If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be
lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and
shout and run to him in delight.

For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find
him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.

Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow
insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire
pathetic dignity.

With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars,
that coiled the hill round like importunate love.

He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home,
begging him to come to her, and come soon.

The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to
take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with
tears!"

He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this?"

The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls
from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by
a barking dog.

The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange
in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed
aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.

He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and
read it again.

The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town
in its chariot.

The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival."

Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His
work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's
house.

The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us."

He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be."

The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And
when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said,
"Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot!"

"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.

"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his
chariot?" asked the Minister.

"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.

The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door!'
yet a King must travel to see him!"

"Who except God visits the poor?" said the man.

Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played
in his wild way with the pet deer.

The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the
love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.

The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A
gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the
movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in
the wind.

The message comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and
glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the
world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth
seeking that which it knew not, leaving all it had known.

And one afternoon, when among the amlak trees the shadow grew grave and
sweet with the furtive caress of light, the deer set off to run like a
meteor in love with death.

It grew dark, and lamps were lighted in the house; the stars came out and
night was upon the fields, but the deer never came back.

My dog ran up to me whining, questioning me with his piteous eyes which
seemed to say, "I do not understand!"

But who does ever understand?

Our Lane is tortuous, as if, ages ago, she started in quest of her goal,
vacillated right and left, and remained bewildered for ever.

Above in the air, between her buildings, hangs like a ribbon a strip torn
out of space: she calls it her sister of the blue town.

She sees the sun only for a few moments at mid-day, and asks herself in
wise doubt, "Is it real?"

In June rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil
hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden
jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her
dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly scheme of creation.

The spring breeze, gone astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a
drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with
scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone mad?"
she exclaims in indignation.

But the daily refuse from the houses on both sides--scales of fish mixed
with ashes, vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and dead rats--never rouse
her to question, "Why should these things be?"

She accepts every stone of her paving. But from between their chinks
sometimes a blade of grass peeps up. That baffles her. How can solid facts
permit such intrusion?

On a morning when at the touch of autumn light her houses wake up into
beauty from their foul dreams, she whispers to herself, "There is a
limitless wonder somewhere beyond these buildings."

But the hours pass on; the households are astir; the maid strolls back from
the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of
provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of
kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal
consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps.

The house, lingering on after its wealth has vanished, stands by the
wayside like a madman with a patched rag over his back.

Day after day scars it with spiteful scratches, and rainy months leave
their fantastic signatures on its bared bricks.

In a deserted upper room one of a pair of doors has fallen from rusty
hinges; and the other, widowed, bangs day and night to the fitful gusts.

One night the sound of women wailing came from that house. They mourned the
death of the last son of the family, a boy of eighteen, who earned his
living by playing the part of the heroine in a travelling theatre.

A few days more and the house became silent, and all the doors were locked.

Only on the north side in the upper room that desolate door would neither
drop off to its rest nor be shut, but swung to and fro in the wind like a
self-torturing soul.

After a time children's voices echo once more through that house. Over the
balcony-rail women's clothes are hung in the sun, a bird whistles from a
covered cage, and a boy plays with his kite on the terrace.

A tenant has come to occupy a few rooms. He earns little and has many
children. The tired mother beats them and they roll on the floor and
shriek.

A maid-servant of forty drudges through the day, quarrels with her
mistress, threatens to, but never leaves.

Every day some small repairs are done. Paper is pasted in place of missing
panes; gaps in the railings are made good with split bamboo; an empty box
keeps the boltless gate shut; old stains vaguely show through new whitewash
on the walls.

The magnificence of wealth had found a fitting memorial in gaunt
desolation; but, lacking sufficient means, they try to hide this with
dubious devices, and its dignity is outraged.

They have overlooked the deserted room on the north side. And its forlorn
door still bangs in the wind, like Despair beating her breast.

In the depths of the forest the ascetic practised penance with fast-closed
eyes; he intended to deserve Paradise.

But the girl who gathered twigs brought him fruits in her skirt, and water
from the stream in cups made of leaves.

The days went on, and his penance grew harsher till the fruits remained
untasted, the water untouched: and the girl who gathered twigs was sad.

The Lord of Paradise heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the
Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and
kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power was that of
suffering.

But he knew the ways of mortals, and he planned a temptation to decoy this
creature of dust away from his adventure.

A breath from Paradise kissed the limbs of the girl who gathered twigs, and
her youth ached with a sudden rapture of beauty, and her thoughts hummed
like the bees of a rifled hive.

The time came when the ascetic should leave the forest for a mountain cave,
to complete the rigour of his penance.

When he opened his eyes in order to start on this journey, the girl
appeared to him like a verse familiar, yet forgotten, and which an added
melody made strange. The ascetic rose from his seat and told her that it
was time he left the forest.

"But why rob me of my chance to serve you?" she asked with tears in her
eyes.

He sat down again, thought for long, and remained on where he was.

That night remorse kept the girl awake. She began to dread her power and
hate her triumph, yet her mind tossed on the waves of turbulent delight.

In the morning she came and saluted the ascetic and asked his blessing,
saying she must leave him.

He gazed on her face in silence, then said, "Go, and may your wish be
fulfilled."

For years he sat alone till his penance was complete.

The Lord of the Immortals came down to tell him that he had won Paradise.

"I no longer need it," said he.

The God asked him what greater reward he desired.

"I want the girl who gathers twigs."

They said that Kabir, the weaver, was favoured of God, and the crowd
flocked round him for medicine and miracles. But he was troubled; his low
birth had hitherto endowed him with a most precious obscurity to sweeten
with songs and with the presence of his God. He prayed that it might be
restored.

Envious of the repute of this outcast, the priests leagued themselves with
a harlot to disgrace him. Kabir came to the market to sell cloths from his
loom; when the woman grasped his hand, blaming him for being faithless, and
followed him to his house, saying she would not be forsaken, Kabir said to
himself, "God answers prayers in his own way."

Soon the woman felt a shiver of fear and fell on her knees and cried, "Save
me from my sin!" To which he said, "Open your life to God's light!"

Kabir worked at his loom and sang, and his songs washed the stains from
that woman's heart, and by way of return found a home in her sweet voice.

One day the King, in a fit of caprice, sent a message to Kabir to come and
sing before him. The weaver shook his head: but the messenger dared not
leave his door till his master's errand was fulfilled.

The King and his courtiers started at the sight of Kabir when he entered
the hall. For he was not alone, the woman followed him. Some smiled, some
frowned, and the King's face darkened at the beggar's pride and
shamelessness.

Kabir came back to his house disgraced, the woman fell at his feet crying,
"Why accept such dishonour for my sake, master? Suffer me to go back to my
infamy!"

Kabir said, "I dare not turn my God away when he comes branded with
insult."

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