MOHIT MITRA Poet Rhyme

Listen, Love

—The Second Keeping—

There was a gate where every winter's flood
Would leave its driftwood tangled through the thorn;
Thou always waitedst till I found firm mud,
Though neither said what waiting might have borne.
I thought such courtesies too slight to keep.
The river did not. Rivers reckon deep.

One March, the ewes had broken through the hedge.
We spent an hour returning them again.
At dusk we parted by the chalky ledge,
Each carrying home a different sort of rain.
I still recall no triumph from that day.
Only that neither hurried from the way.

Years later, where the hawthorns met the lane,
We stopp'd because thy boot had taken clay.
I ask'd if thou wert cold. I ask again
Whether thou heard'st the thing I could not say.
It was not silence held us so apart.
We let our caution masquerade as heart.

How quietly the faithful learn to fail.
No tower announces where its stone first slips.
A house is lost before the loosen'd nail;
A realm before rebellion finds its lips.
Love seldom leaves because one grief was great.
It leaves by learning daily how to wait.

Last autumn, by the sheep-track through the fern,
We met as strangers practise being kind.
Thou ask'dst, "Art well?" I answer'd only, "Near."
And something older loosen'd in my mind.
For "near" contain'd what neither could deny:
The heart arrives before it knows the why.

I deem'd we sought the seasons that had fled,
The unspent harvest sleeping in the loam;
Yet while we spoke, another thought was bred—
Not, "Take me back," but, "Teach me how be home."
The road had never wander'd from its place.
It waited for a wiser pair of pace.

Then all at once—and none could answer how—
The rooks flew east before the dawn was born;
The yew cast noon where only stars should bow,
And every root lean'd upward through the thorn.
The earth forgot which way its darkness grew.
Something remember'd us before we knew.

We spoke no vow. Thou didst not take my hand.
The wind continu'd through the barley's head.
We only found ourselves at last to stand
Where neither turn'd away from what was said.
It came to me—as though it were not mine— 
That love first alters those by whom they shine.

Now if there be another road to tread,
It need not counterfeit the first we knew;
The child who dreamt beneath our names is dead,
Yet something wiser asks to walk them through.
I cannot say when we began anew.
Only that, somewhere, truth had waited too.

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