Why, my friend, you feel sad, and suffer? live

A life appointed by an anguished god?

Why this fortuneless gaze? The soughing wind

Blows across the field, and the autumn moon

In remote calm seems to drift in the sky

Of an inclement repose. Waning hues

Have spread their sorrow over your spirit,

And the gain is neither yours, nor nature’s.

I know you bemoan the misgivings, wants

That grow, and grow, even in simple hearts,

And there is an invasion destroying

The barn and the pen and the little hut,

And inartistic things of the city

Are taking possession of our small tears

As natural as weeping of the brood.

From a factory making lamps in shades

Of algaeic green they come, lamps that give

Light of darkness bearing the pain of death

That hardly was in the wick and the clay,

And in the folktale. Wax and string and awl

You had picked up when you were still a boy

And drew joy in faultless intimacy

Of the cobbler’s instinctive craft. Methought

You would make shoes for the fairies; for gods

And goddesses perchance. Such were those times;

But now we have synthetic dreadfulness

Cutting into our day’s yearning. Beaten,

Bereaved of your dear ones you live alone

On fading edge of the village. Could be

Harsh fate in the guise of country fever

Entered into peace of your lonely soul

And snatched away what belonged to the past.

It was a shrine of virtue, and perhaps

Thus had its force spent out. You discovered

In a rich and superb ennobling way

Lasting wisdom born of shoemaker’s job.

RY Deshpande

20 June 2004