My reply to Tagore

Separated by a century I reply to a poem....

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? 
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.
(RabindranathTagore,  The Gardener, 1915)


A reader replies

Great bard of Bengal, now almost one hundred years since those lines,
I, your reader, descendant of the Raj that you despised, living in a world so different to your day,
read of your garden. My heart leaps! 
I fling wide my garden door. The flowers, bright birdsong and fragrances speak now as they spoke in living joy 
that still rises with the sap and sings of divinity in subtle colours, so pale. My spring morning:
that same elation from floral memories and golden clouds.




(John Butterfield 2012)

Train Journey

by John Butterfield

I never remember the scenery

nor the stations that we pass

but the passengers in my carriage

are part of life's rich farce...

There's the boy with the headphones

whose music is so loud

the we all can make out the lyrics

over the noise of the crowd.

There is the lonely older lady

who tells everyone her woe

and the beautiful young women

That men want to get to know!

There is the friendly girl with the trolley

bringing drinks, candy and snacks

and the grim ticket collector

who ignores all the wise cracks!

We rattle along for hours

in our own little world

enjoying the drama of the journey

all human life unfurled.