A Vagrant

A Vagrant

A vagrant ascetic was sitting

 On the bank of a river, quietly.   There were no ripples in the river

Except where a rock or a boulder breaks the flow

And vainly tries to hold her down.

The ascetic too was without a sign of a ruffle,

And nothing else there was in view

As far as his eye could see

Except the stream and

The shadows of the pine trees bending

Over him and over the flow.

Invisible were both—he and the river

To the eye of any passing beholder—

So quiet were the river and the man.

How long he had been brooding there

No one knew—over the expanse of the waters.

No one knew except the river and the man

That moment—

That moment of love—

That moment when the man became aware of love.

No one knew except the river when the man got up

And surged forward, not in madness but in love.

There was nothing before that he had held in his mind—

It was emptied of all essence.

The river knew him even before he came.

She carried his secret word in her heart.

Even before he had uttered the word.

She knew him when he came.

And as he watched her path

Resting on the edge of her waters

She knew what she had known

All along as she coursed her path.

The river even knew the empty spaces inside his silence.

The river knew why the spaces

Were emptied of all essence.

The river knew how to break the guarding walls

And rush inside those empty spaces

Because emptiness was known to her

Ever since she had learned to flow.

He guarded his emptiness—

That was his freedom: inherited,

And the river was a river because she knew what freedom was.

And the man was her lover

Destined to come to her banks.

Alas, she could not wait like that virgin maiden

Under the shades of that pine tree

And watch for the sign of his coming.

She was a river; she had to flow.

Every moment she was born anew

Until the destined moment came

And agitated the heart of the lover

Who did not know her and the vortex

 In the heart of her flow.

The man in full awareness

Woke up from his trance.

He looked deep in the vortex where the river ran and plunged herself

Deep in the knowledge of her being,

Hiding her secret there.

She had taken the plunge long ago;

She had hidden her secret long back;

And long back she had risen from the vortex

And rushed up to flow forward and forward again.

Wanderers and travelers,

Pilgrims and ravagers

Had stood there on her banks.

The vortex was a terrific sight to behold.

None waited there long enough

To look and delve into the secret heart—

In its still and secret heart.

The man came and watched.

The vortex held no fear for him.

Secrets are revealed

When you watch and fall in love with what you see.

That is the way knowledge dawns

Like the ray of a morning

From the still center of a vibrant heart

To fall into the silent lake that ripples in love

And hides the light of the dawn

In its calm surface
which veils the knowledge the ascetic has

Of the river and her flow shielded in his heart.

And the river flows on

With the knowledge of the moment of love, she was waiting for

With the stillness in her movement

And she in the stillness
separated from the flow

Waiting for love to happen on her banks.

And I have seen them both:

The stillness and the movement,

The river and the lover

In these woods of far-away, nestling in their trance.