Evening Dirge

Evening Dirge
  
A sad lament from a mournful heart
Now drifts upon the seas.
What wound did so much pain impart
That this attempts to ease?

At eventide, when the sun goes down,
Our spirits also sink
To mellowness or deep despair,
As men do inwards think.

And just, as at dawn, our thoughts move out
To meet the bright new day,
So too, at eve, our minds turn in
To join, remember, pray...

Like the yang and the yin of the Orient,
And the bop and the blues of the West,
The moods of morn and evéning
Do call, to rise and rest,

That energy of mind and heart
That waxes and then wanes--
Just as the rising, sinking moons
Do swell or ebb the waves.
 
We each are subject to the tides
That pull upon the seas
That rage within our arteries
Or lull our minds to ease...
 
The sun of dawn sweeps out the stars,
And chases thoughts away
That cling to sorrows of the past,
As we brace for the coming day.

At sunset, older memories,
By day, obscured from sight,
Can come to our minds, just as the skies
Are cleared for the stars of night.

And so, at dusk, on waters dark,
The boatman wails of loss,
As ancient stars emerge to link
The present to the past.

And thus our days fade into nights,
'Twixt the full and the absent moon:
The spaces of eternity,
And the brief bright light of noon.
 
Babui (Arjun) Janah
< sjanah@aol.com >
2006.04.09 Sun.

Gravesend Bay
Brooklyn, New York