Azure

Sun-dappled

Dawn’s sky, the blue of deep midnight—

You reveal yourself, time and again, in boundless splendor,

Beyond the prison walls of this helpless city.

Here, coils of thick smoke billow upward,

Fierce furnace-fires blaze ceaselessly;

Crimson gravel, steeped in the desert’s scorching breath,

Lies veiled in mirage.

Countless wayfarers’ souls

Search endlessly, yet find no path;

Hard chains of authority bind their feet;

O unblinking Azure—this prison-floor of myriad edicts

You have shattered with your magic wand, O enchantress!

Amidst the crowd’s clamor, I sit alone and ponder:

What spell of a distant, mystical realm

Did you bring, alone, to these blood-stained shores of reality?

Spreading your azure canopy in crystalline light—

Like the wings of a silent, dream-born peacock!

From my eyes fades the blood-stain of the wounded earth,

And the radiant flame of the boundless sky ignites!

The earth’s tear-streaked, scorching sands,

The tattered rags, the bare-headed beggars, this merciless highway,

This prison of countless dying souls,

This dust—this vast, smoke-filled darkness—

All dissolve into the azure—into the spellbound gaze of dreams,

Into conch-white clouds, into the star-lit, radiant night sky;

The earth’s withered, insect-like husk falls away

At your sudden touch, O sleepless, distant realm of dreams!