For Your Eyes Only

K Radhakumar

My next-door neighbour and I
We the two of us
Love walking in the hills.
The roads are not congested
And we go walking there everyday
For an hour or so in the evening.
One day we climb the northern side of the hill
For about half an hour and then take rest.
After some minutes I breathe easily again and I find
My friend taking a breathtaking view
Of a block of stone on the hillside.
He has a big smile on his face
And suddenly turns at me and says,
‘Listen! Echoes of its music! Can you hear it?’
He does not look like a man of this world.
He behaves as if he has seen something
As if he has heard a song.
I look around to see if there are flowers nearby
For my friend is likely to say
‘The scent of the formless that subsists in my mind
Has wafted along in the light breeze.’
I do not like him in such moments.
Frankly, I do not know what bothers me
And I always keep quiet –
The pregnant moment shows my admiration
For a friend living in communion with nature.
We return home quickly
For it looks like rain.

It rains the next few days
And our evening walks in the hills
Die an unwanted death
In those long, lazy days.

The nest week is a new week;
The rain has gone away to Spain
And the sky is clear.
We again team up for the evening exercise –
Two souls in a tiny corner of the vast world.
The day we resume our routine
My friend asks me
For a cup of tea at his home.
Why not?
We always have our tea
He has his herb tea
And I my lemon tea
As soon as we return home
From our evening walk.
I do not know how the block of stone from the hill
Comes to his home during the rainy days 
And how his hammer and chisels dance at his touch –
There stands a stone bust of his deceased mother
In the last light of the evening
Full of the sights and sounds
Of the living and the dead
Of the past and the present.