The Gardener

Excerpt

SERVANT. Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!

QUEEN. The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why
do you come at this late hour?

SERVANT. When you have finished with others, that is my time.
I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.

QUEEN. What can you expect when it is too late?

SERVANT. Make me the gardener of your flower garden.

QUEEN. What folly is this?

SERVANT. I will give up my other work.
I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send
me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests.
But make me the gardener of your flower garden.

QUEEN. What will your duties be?

SERVANT. The service of your idle days.
I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning,
where your feet will be greeted with praise at every step by
the flowers eager for death.
I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the
saptaparna, where the early evening moon will struggle
to kiss your skirt through the leaves.
I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your
bedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron
paste in wondrous designs.

QUEEN. What will you have for your reward?

SERVANT. To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender
lotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge
the soles of your feet with the red juice ofashoka
petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to
linger there.

QUEEN. Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be the
gardener of my flower garden.



"Ah, poet, the evening draws near; your hair is turning grey.
"Do you in your lonely musing hear the message of the hereafter?"

"It is evening," the poet said, "and I am listening because some
one may call from the village, late though it be.
"I watch if young straying hearts meet together, and two pairs of
eager eyes beg for music to break their silence and speak for
them.
"Who is there to weave their passionate songs, if I sit on the
shore of life and contemplate death and the beyond?

"The early evening star disappears.
"The glow of a funeral pyre slowly dies by the silent river.
"Jackals cry in chorus from the courtyard of the deserted house
in the light of the worn-out moon.
"If some wanderer, leaving home, come here to watch the night and
with bowed head listen to the murmur of the darkness, who is
there to whisper the secrets of life into his ears if I,
shutting my doors, should try to free myself from mortal bonds?

"It is a trifle that my hair is turning grey.
"I am ever as young or as old as the youngest and the oldest of
this village.
"Some have smiles, sweet and simple, and some a sly twinkle in
their eyes.
"Some have tears that well up in the daylight, and others tears
that are hidden in the gloom.
They all have need for me, and I have no time to brood over the
afterlife.
"I am of an age with each, what matter if my hair turns grey?"

3

In the morning I cast my net into the sea.
I dragged up from the dark abyss things of strange aspect and
strange beauty—some shone like a smile, some glistened like
tears, and some were flushed like the cheeks of a bride.
When with the day's burden I went home, my love was sitting in
the garden idly tearing the leaves of a flower.
I hesitated for a moment, and then placed at her feet all that I
had dragged up, and stood silent.
She glanced at them and said, "What strange things are these? I
know not of what use they are!"
I bowed my head in shame and thought, "I have not fought for
these, I did not buy them in the market; they are not fit gifts
for her."
Then the whole night through I flung them one by one into the
street.
In the morning travellers came; they picked them up and carried
them into far countries.

4

Ah me, why did they build my house by the road to the market
town?
They moor their laden boats near my trees.
They come and go and wander at their will.
I sit and watch them; my time wears on.
Turn them away I cannot. And thus my days pass by.

Night and day their steps sound by my door.
Vainly I cry, "I do not know you."
Some of them are known to my fingers, some to my nostrils, the
blood in my veins seems to know them, and some are known to my
dreams.
Turn them away I cannot. I call them and say, "Come to my house
whoever chooses. Yes, come."

In the morning the bell rings in the temple.
They come with their baskets in their hands.
Their feet are rosy red. The early light of dawn is on their
faces.
Turn them away I cannot. I call them and I say, "Come to my
garden to gather flowers....