Ashrama

for Trina Purohit Roy

I have come home. The children play and learn,
the garden wakes each instant in the sun.
It is an ashram to which I return,
a house of new awareness is begun.
I have come home. There is a musical phrase
implicit in the breath of evening’s hour,
a drift of notes in the least light to praise
a heartland. I am under India’s power.
Thirty-five years out was but a day
for visiting. And now no more a guest,
I do the paperwork, I shape the clay,
and leave unlocked a house of work and rest.
But who will part the doors when I am gone?
The day and night of India, on and on.

T.P.R. returned to India from Germany in late middle age to set up a voluntary organisation. Chetanalok (awareness-place/people/light) offers a healing care, or no more than a place to be, to all. It is the least institutional of institutions. Local children attend every day.