I have spent the last 20 days in South India having treatments at an Ayurveda Clinic out in the countryside outside of Cochin. Needless to say, this poem is the result of the influence the surroundings have had on me.

Daybreak in India
By John Herlihy


As I sit alone in silence,
As the tamarind tree washes over the balcony,
As the dawn’s first light appears on the horizon,
As the chipmunks play like children on cottage roofs,
As a smoky mist hovers over the distant paddy fields,
As the crows swoop low under angry monsoon clouds,
As the wind gently bedevils the fronds in palm groves,
As pale smoke rises aloft from the red brick chimneys,
As the wheels of a train clatter on the distant tracks,
As the vigilant rooster cries out the coming of dawn,

I held my breath as I listened and held it again.
The night’s silence now blends into the day’s sound.
The night itself surrenders to the coming of the dawn.
The birds stretch their feathers with rhythmic song.
The oxen murmur as they feed on paddy field grasses.
The tinker-bells of workers’ bicycles give harsh warning.
The nurses dressed in white saris chatter like singing birds.
The melancholy voice of a harmonica drifts out the window.
The musical sounds all seem to blend together as one psalm.
Taken up lovingly in the extended arms of the monsoon wind.

Out of the dream of morning’s awakening, the music begins,
The chanting of sacred verses arises from dawn’s depths.
Out of the wake of night’s swift close, the sacred song soars,
The voices drift thru the early light like happy, wandering spirits
Out of the heart of eternal night into the bright light of day.
The murmured voices accompanied by the soothing sitar.
With dawn-hushed breath, chanters sing soft evocative tones.
The voices take on the aura of ancient, primeval hymns,
As they move across straw-thatched rooftops into open sky.

So to, my heart rises and stirs, as my soul fills to the brim,
Lost and at home amid the chanting of sacred Vedas,
As they steal my heart and waft upward into the clouds,
Making their way heavenward on the wings of sound.
The grand symphony of praise will continue to sound,
Until it passes thru the gates to the very Throne of God.
Where echoes reside with melodic quietude in near silence,
In the presence of the Sacred, the Eternal, the Infinite.