Views of Kanchenjunga

I see Kanchenjunga from the backyard:

Despite summer’s heat,

Peacefully slumbers the Sleeping Buddha

Tucked in a cotton sheet of snow

And I float in its highland dreams

That of mountain peace,

The evergreen smell of Darjeeling

And Teesta-Rangeet’s green

 

Closer on my wicker table

Makaibari’s autumn flush brews in Borosil

While Dalrymple’s latest

Urges to travel forward on the Golden Road

I smile – this deserves

An invisible pat on the wearied back,

But I am too languid

Ah! the cries of the cicada’s summer

 

Hours pass by – or are these minutes?

The mountains seem to induce

A sense of timelessness in their gaze –

Where’s the rush?  Kabru smiles

This is eternity in a second, Pandim whispers

Lose yourself, farther and farther away,  says Simovo

But Kanchenjunga says not a word

It knows the illusion we all are

 

 

A fire-tailed sunbird flits away -

The reverie melts like sugar in my tea

And the taste of tannin settles deep

I look again at the mountain backyard

Longing wistfully to crush

The marigold leaves and smell the wilderness

Or whirl like the saffron cosmos dervishes

In this tea garden’s ridge of Ghoom’s happiness

 

So many meltwater streams of contentment

But I know the only source:

The glacial Kanchenjunga

Its five treasures of happiness

(I translate them to Time, Peace, the mountain’s balmy air

The taste of warm sinensis

All snowcapped on a summer’s day

By the only mountains that matter)

 

I see Kanchenjunga from the backyard -

Eudaimonia in the mountain air :

What else can anyone long for?

After walking the steep weary ways

On these hillsides of garden teas;

But sometimes, when the cup of tea runs empty

I wonder in melancholy, why

There is no Kanchenjunga seen from the backyard…

 

02^nd February, 2025