To Arnab

The Brightness of Your Melodies

Dazzling rays, gold on a lake of blue,

And I standing in gardens shimmering bright

Remembered in my sorrow worlds of joy

Among the silver koi and lotuses.

It was the brightness of your melodies

That played amongst the children's laughter-song.

I stayed enchanted long into the night

And in my sleep heard again your strains

Composer with the magic wonder-touch,

Musician voicing overtones of bliss

Who hears eternal strophes the angels sing

Transcribing in our hearts their mantric odes.

I walked again the meadows of my youth

Mid fragrances once known, ethereal,

Discovering again the redolence

Of violets, anemone, and rue.

I watched the winged and coloured hymns of air

Alight on perfumed branch and flowered stem

To sing of their delight in new-born Spring,

The rapture-call of earth now filled my soul.

And when the music ceased I heard it still,

An anthem or apostrophe of love

Weaving through the corridors of time,

The paean of a higher world's content.

Pour on us your stanzas of delight

O singer-poet share with us again

Your choruses and symphonies of light,

Uplift our hearts, attune these mortal strings

To harmonies celestial, divine,

Enriching earth with music realign

To beauty's path our consciousness; we bow

To That of which your music is the sign.