THE DESIGN

The birds are chirping gay in the boughs of spring,

No care or concern for the old ones dying;
The men are splitting waves in merriment
No reck for the patriarch as over them death bent...

The freaks are caught insane in wildest spell,
While swallows do die off in torrid gale,
Or down the fatal trail do sparrows slip,
Or shores in raging sea's devouring grip:

Lost are all in the falsehood of existence,
In ignorance of the divine essence,
And essaying through for physical pleasure;
Of the inevitable they are unaware.

Those that are singing gay are not the same;
Those that are reveling wild are not the same:
The heady birds, the hysterical men--
To make out the Design they are inane...

The birds will go, the men will go; some moments
Of act-- all these chirping and merriment--
All transitory with the mundane residers
To only be replaced by other creatures:

The continuity does lie in the Creator sole,
And the finality none is here to flout;
Birds come and go, men come and go, by all
With His each breath in and His each breath out.

                                                    -- N P Samal