Kunwar Narain

1927 / Faizabad

HOROSCOPE

Lying in a field of flowers,
I have often thought about the dew,
fluorescent dots
dripped onto the petals
with nibs of light.
What astrologer designed this complex horoscope
of the glittering firmament?
And why do these luminous signs vanish,
from one to zero?
Whose is this cynical, geometrical yawn?

And then I thought
about the bedraggled leaves under the trees -
Who thought up this mathematical puzzle?
The wind is counting:
it gathers leaves anywhere,
and deposits them anywhere.
At times, it snatches a few leaves from the tree,
crumples them and tosses them carelessly away.
At times it spreads out a new sheet,
and doodles trees, trees, trees . . .
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