I counted numberless sparrows pick at my grains;
Poor birds! Eat, I have got more than this old man needs;
Rich I now stand amid my riches-
Poorer though I lay, in ruins, when leaves last fell,
When I bereaved my wife, and my son’s widow wailed.
The laden tops of pregnant maize are brushing against my wrinkled hands,
I can smell the ripened leaves and dry grains,
I can see the dun reaching out to where the sun sets-
It looked much the same last fall as I saw a simmering world-
Yes, I couldn’t count the sparrows though.
I ploughed this land upon which I now walk,
My legs falter upon the uneven terrain,
My breath comes in gasps;
Far away my grandson cries there,
I walk amid my riches until I hear him no more.
-27\11\98,Calcutta-63

COMMENTS :

The blindness of fate has been much commented upon. Sometimes it seems outright malevolent, instead of just blind. And yet sometimes fate seems benevolent. Unfortunately this munificence of fate sometimes comes too late and in too little a quantity. A bountiful harvest after the mouths have been buried is no harvest. Such is the old man here. But then there is a silver lining- his grandson is there. The resilience of humanity is not subject to the pressures of determinism- evolution and adaptation, added with the courage, capacity and the formidable intellect and ambition of man comes to rescue him at many crisis points. The grandchild is but the child of man, and a child the father of man.