She comes from the abyss She is an Abyssinian maid
a damsel with a dulcimer
She appears in every heart whenever she lists
and then vanishes
She possesses you whenever she chooses
But when you seek to possess her
she gives you the slip
Do you want to enter into the wilderness of your heart
and seek her and hunt her?
That will be a sacrilege
A body is not worth a penny
It costs you a pound to send it to the morgue
Kill the swan that lays a golden egg everyday at your door
You won't get golden eggs any
more
The eggs already in the refriegerator will lose their hue
and putefaction will set in
There is a widespread rumour that she has been killed
The American warheads never miss their targets
But that is not true
The poem hunters espy her now and then
in the moonblanched greens as well as in kitchens
and at dinner parties
But you cannot possess her
Nor can you revive hersong
One of the finest hunters among us tried to do that
Right then a creditor knocked at his door
Each one of us must pay Caesar hisdue and God his due
And only then the damsel with dulcimer will hold us with her hand
and carry us past the clouds and past the moon
True the poemhunters cannot revive her song
But their poems are the explicatio of the same
from n; angles
The authors are dead but the one author is always there
The poem hunters tell us about the author-the damsel with a dulcimer
And they tell us of the abyss whence she comes
t
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-damsel/
