Land of my birth,
you come to me now with
the simmer of oozing pinewood
in grandmother's hearth,
and earthernware pot
in which the pickles rot.

Laughing children with red apple faces
in village green
covered up in loam
fill spaces
in the hollow that was home.
Visions of your mountain goat
with swinging beard and scimitar horn
leaping for the long summer corn
on cloven foot
are yet about.

Your frozen river by willow's edge
and first snow upon purple stone
send quiver from open feet
up spine of urban bone.
And in fractured city night
the gurgle of white-crested cataract
upon giant bole of fallen chinar
is lullaby to my soul.
Your time of early leaf
after winter ice pushes
green thoughts through my metal brain
in blades of rice.
And the golden haze of autumn leaves
in slant September sun
and the warmth of stubble sheaves
stacked against the horizon
make yet my blood run.

A thousand thousand thrills among
is the music of your hills
and the passion of your tongue.

And, land of my birth,
you come to me with feeling
in magic call of mesmerized muezzin
from sunset-flushed mosque
like invitation to healing.

(from my Crescent God & Other Poems, Writers' Workshop, Calcutta, 1982)

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