MOHIT MITRA Poet Rhyme

First Beloved

—The Earlier Allegiance—

Before foreknowledge supped beside my bread,
 Aurora sought no covenant from mine;
 The root received the dew where it was led,
 The flame fulfilled an elder countersign.
 No field appealed against the year's decree;
 Spring kept the oath because it used to be.

Then apprehension learnt my proper name.
 I housed misfortune ere it sought the door;
 The kettle cooled awaiting absent flame,
 The rain delayed above the threshing floor.
 What bore no substance governed every mile;
 The road forgot the discipline of arrival.

The letter wandered counties of its own.
 The train stood listening somewhere past the hill.
 The orchard held its sweetness half unknown,
 As though abundance waited upon will.
 I loosed one fear I had mistaken for my own;
 The evening shortened every road to home.

One vesper, without sacrament or sign,
 I laid two cups upon the oaken board—
 One mine; one hers withdrawn from mortal time.
 The vapour bent where absence was ignored.
 The chamber never questioned whom it knew;
 Its welcome recognised no former view.

Thereafter memory ceased to speak in loss.
 The fire made no distinction in its light;
 The ash retained an undiscovered gloss;
 The dawn restored what evening left from sight.
 Creation seemed incapable of proving
 Which warmth was memory, which warmth was loving.

An old wife scattered crumbs beyond the hedge.
 No witness praised the courtesy she gave.
 The laden bough descended to her reach,
 As though the fruit remembered whom to save.
 Tomorrow altered nothing by command;
 It merely sought the undisarming hand.

Then came the knowledge language could not house.
 The gate remembered long before the hand.
 The river changed beneath its secret boughs
 Before the valley understood the land.
 The seed became its April in the clod
 Before the sun interpreted its God.

Since then I neither litigate nor plead.
 The rose petitions no ensuing spring;
 It keeps inviolate its fragrant creed,
 And leaves the wind to finish witnessing.
 Thus every circumstance, however far,
 Arrives where love has always been before.

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