Aju Mukhopadhyay,
IN
The Profiles of Birds
High growth
and thick foliage
in an enclosure opposite our garden
invited the golden orioles to stay on;
often they perch on a bo tree or an old banyan
sometimes chasing the irritant house crows
sometimes coming close to us for a short stay
soon to fly away.
As the summer through rains was evaporating
I found them often absenting;
the idea that they might have migrated
gave birth to a feeling of remorse
for not snapping them during their course.
Bright golden-yellow with sharp black patches
preening and pruning with beak
gnawed at my heart, incited me to seek
and catch them to keep in memory digital.
And then suddenly—peu
peu peu—
the call reverberated in the air;
if not all, it must have reached a few.
Ready with camera held in two hands
as I stood below the drum-stick tree
they were spreading wings, preening and pruning
unafraid and free;
seeing me close by, posing the instrument to catch
they began love making, two of them dancing
jovially, jumping from branch to branch;
it seemed entirely unusual and rare
for them to so behave with me so near.
I began clicking to catch and imprison the beauties
forgetting that the Sun was at its youth—
standing before me; a morning sooth
like a real cul-de-sac.
I caught, alas, the shadows of the birds,
profiles surrounded by twisting branches and dark leaves,
colourless facades.
Though in my heart I have kept their images and song
the idea to imprison them was perhaps wrong.
I strongly feel that all this has been
with the intervention of a presence unseen
for things evanescent in any sense
are to be realized only in essence.
