The Sea Gull In this sun-drenched morning, with the sea gull I have tried to speak today; Once it nears the mountain, Then in a flash, it descends toward the sea; Crawling, it floats upon the foam, Wiped away by the storm of the waves. I stand here, glass in hand, amidst the dust of centuries. Chased by the stars of the waves, it goes further toward more waves— To the wilderness of foam Where the first sunlight of rain Shakes its golden wings; Where the sky is blue and clamorous, Where sea accumulates distant seas, And the horizon loses itself in the heart of the horizon. Upon the restless white breast dance fingers of foam; Veins on two feet, like stalks of grain, Dance the Spanish Tango on blue waves; The heart pumps the wine of Malabar breezes; Trom-trom, tram-tram—like a drum The rough movement of the sea echoes cliff to cliff; Shell-flowers dazzle in the glare of sun upon sun. Is Science as lonely as a box for the brain? Your body holds the scent of water-grapes; In your heart, the fields of sunlight ripen and fall, New children of harvest are waking; We return to the port—amidst the crowd—in the whirlpool, The longing eyes in the head of a dog— Will he not find his tail? Ho-ho—will he not? Will those longing eyes, like a dog's, not find the tail? Leaving itself to the heart of the northern wind, Your wings were born—your heart awakened; I have untied the knots of a thousand centuries in the scent of roads and homes— Yet I have found no acquaintance with Joy; White wings were not born by piercing the progress of Science, The stairs to the sky—to the stars—have broken, I have sought the festival in the songs of deep nights. In every direction of the earth, I have scattered the seeds of mind—alas, The lonely children of desire; Or lying on the body of the grass in the mist I have heard the falling of paddy; Or at the blue window of evening The invisible cuckoo comes to sing— The harsh radium of all this pain cannot be cured by that. Sometimes, for once, I surrender to the hands of the stars And come away to the side of the sea; The field that is ending—has ended— Its thirst is being quenched in the sky; I look upon the picture of that blue sky; The fragrance of stories from the sea’s unconscious window; Floating on the wings of sunlight, I wish to lose the earth Right there; taking the play of the sea gull into my hands. [2] In the colorful, expansive sunlight, its soul luxuriates; Never in the paddy fields did the soul of the earth's peasant Find such sun—nor the fruit of the olive leaves, Nor the joy with which the fly sang in the heat of a June noon, When a maiden, bending her tender neck, quietly braids her hair in the ripe sun, When the Madhukupi grass of the earth spreads out in blue, When the month of Chaitra dreams while lying in the watermelon field— Its soul luxuriates in a wine far more precious and dense than those. A beauty that no one has ever seen on earth: The diamonds and gems of Ceylon looted by sailors Who descended into the Indian Ocean on a starry night, And then at dawn saw water as clear as crystal; The honey and milk of wave upon dense wave, The rosy face of clouds—the bubbles of sunlight; Yet even they did not see the anklets chiming on the bed of many arms beneath the waves At the window of Varuna: no one knows it, save the sea gulls and the flies. The fire of the sounding waves descends into the blood like the breasts of puberty! In the warm blue watermelon fields of the waves May Death find me: While walking the path of vastness— May the whole earth dissolve into the sea of sunlight; Where the sea gull and its mate play: May Death find me in the reassurance of that cinnamon breeze.
