Remould This Dense Resistant Clay

It was not a time for singing or for song.

Tears like burning solder stung my eyes,

I dragged myself unconsciously along

Beneath the deluge of the monsoon skies.

One came upon me like a brazen thief

And snatched my joy as from an open purse,

Pain as I had often known, and grief

As he lifted poems still in my soul, and worse

Stole the muse that long had guided me.

I walked uncaring in the pelting rain

As a swimmer drowning in an angry sea,

A sadness deep, unbearable my pain.

Silver arrows tore into my feet

As I travelled roads no rain could ever clean.

I find this transient life so bittersweet

With its enigma of the unforeseen.

When I was young I heard the dying scream

Of a wounded hare bleeding by the road

I hear it still in waking and in dream

And know death's agony to be life's goad.

But the leash of the subconscient stretches far

And holds us captive in our ignorance

Circumscribed by passions, wants bizarre

Fulfilled at the yearning soul's expense.

We give undue importance to a mind

Incapable of silence to receive

Incoming truth and to the light blind

And at the end in breathless silence leave.

Now all my heart cries out, its breaking heard

By none except the Witness of the Way,

I seek through love to find the ennobling Word

That shall remould this dense resistant clay.