Tuesday Poem: "The Brook" by Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Down lines of pine and eglantine

Serpentine in my falling

I touch the woodbines and the vines

Mellifluously calling.

Calling on links of ripply winks
To ocean anemone
On silver kinks that pass through chinks
Of mountain chalcedony.

On stones of silver tones I ring
Make music of the mountain
Intonating notations fine
To make his sonant fountains.

I linger as a singer
Gingerly in my saree
Of silver threads and leap adown
Singing my charivari.

I wobble on my ripples
In which the sunbeams dabble
I double as I babble on
And on the pebbles babble.

I rally all my ripples
And make a sparkling sally
And dally down to daffodils
Into a dappled valley.

My silver bells a-jingle
Mingle upon the shingles
I jangle as a wrangle on
Illuming little ingles.

I titter as I glitter
Beneath the blossom's twitter
I fritter fairy jewels
Borne on my silver litter.

I murmur, murmur merrily
A marine mermaid funning
Remembering my marine home
By airy rumours running.

By pleasant haunts of pheasants
And rainbow wings aflutter;
By peewit-haunted woodlands
I spurt, I race, I sputter.

I wander, wander as I run
Meandering in meshes
I squander all my music
Philandering my cresses.

I wield my water chisel
Rounding the angled boulder;
And carve my fretted bank curves
Singing a fairy moulder.

On earth's incline I wind and twine
Upon her pull I scurry;
To find her random wrinkles
Romances in my hurry.

Liquidly skidding scud I down
Love's path divinely fretted
The sunshine on the tears of life
In lovely lays all netted.

I purl and whirl and twirl my kinks
A girl in woodlands merry
I swirl, my silver scarves unfurl,
Curl fairy pearls to ferry.

By kindling briar blooms I flow
Spindling on brindled gravel
I scintillate on diamonds
As down the thorps I travel.

I murmur, murmur, murmur on,
Remembering my ocean;
For life is flow, the reaching slow,
But quick is quick emotion.

by Laxmi Prasad Devkota

For more about the Nepali poet, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxmi_Prasad_Devkota

I'm posting this poem by, arguably, Nepal's greatest poet to honour the memory of all those who have lost their lives in the recent earthquake in Nepal. May they rest in peace.