Like baby priests the birdlings screech
With mouths agape their hungry prayer,
A dissonant hymn hearts to breach
From altar nests rise voices of despair.

Like a pilgrim lost the furry feline
With its rites of bite and scratch,
Mewling and scouting as an orphan
Its temple of repose in a downy perch.

But on an earth-cradle we helpless wait
Through the whirl of the solar rounds,
By aspiration withered yet an infant,
A bawling and wailing our only prayers.

Oh, by the million voices that seek Thy solace
Do not, O Grace, weigh our feeble penances.

Hard is the day when the altars go empty,
No bright flame lights up Thy seated visage,
Nor flowers and incense to offer in plenty,
With paltry offerings I must Thee assuage.

The fire-seats of sacrifice, the yagña’s ground
Burned feebly by half-remembered murmur
Of chants that once to the skies did resound
But now must whimper near feeble ember.

Like a tired mother bird I come to my nest
To the waiting mouths of my baby flames,
All the assiduous searching couldn’t wrest
For famished aspirations nourishing deeds.

Huddle near, O ye hungry gods,
Tonight I shall sate your hungers with tears.

What vital breath this that animated moves
Yet cold and warmthless like winter breeze,
Where gone the flame of emotion and passion
Leaving this dwelling stark and barren?

Where gone the fire-sparks of thought
That once to mind scintillations brought?
But now the mind is like a stirless sail
That every living wind did staunchly fail.

Where gone the muse high browed
Who to the empyrean my gaze lifted?
Alas, now I waddle time’s murky brook,
My tread a crawl, human my outlook.

I pray Thee accept this imperfect gift,
After all that is taken, this is all I have left.

Does it glut Thee, the fervourless flames
Lit by the hands of old received habit,
Doest it singe, the lay pungent incense
From smoked pith, the ashes’ debt?

Who bringest Thee worship robust and full,
As when world was young and men as gods
Where every gesture was natively noble
And mortal air teemed with the stainless?

Who builds Thee a monument a day
And marks the frieze for Thy name alone,
Who solicits in twilight Thy muse’s ray
To shield Thee from the dull and mundane?

Oh, it is but Thee who for Thyself scripts
Such incorrigible yet faithful sons as us!

I bore Thee the first-born thought of the day
From the mind that endured passage of night,
So must the following hours be I did pray
But the hours proved hardy and adamant.

Poised on a strange precipice I hover
Twixt lucidity and an unknown drowse,
Wither this oscillation I can’t decipher
That sways scaffold of my human poise.

Lead me through this crossroad confounding
Where meet all the bypaths of tamas,
Transmute all incapacities here breeding
Into an expression of Thy undying strengths.

Ink for me a victory integral and true,
In lieu I’ll ransom for Thee daily a poem or two!

Who is it that wanders by the armoured gates
Mocking the shield-will of my defences,
Strutting by the chasm of the moat danger-filled
And chiding our upkeep in contemptuous word?

Who is that conceives in an ease-laden leisure
My swift ruin for an afternoon’s pleasure,
With will untroubled and nerve unstrained
Capturing my being as if already ordained?

Who hath sowed black rebellion and anarchy
In the mind and will and heart of me,
My decrees met with careless defiance
And my will stamped with seal of inconsequence?

O Plotter Supreme, O White Hegemon,
Who shall remain for Thy sport and conquest when am gone?