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.