Final Curtain

final curtain falls
billowing like ocean waves
silencing the stars

final curtain falls
a veil across the sunrise
no more blackbird song

billowing like ocean waves
there is no applause
when the curtain falls

silencing the stars
dark clouds pass over the moon
the curtain’s fallen

Kim M. Russell, 30^th September 2018

My response to Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #52 Tagore’s “Last Curtain”

In the last weekend meditation of September 2018, our challenge is to ‘distil’ a haiku from another poem by Rabindranath Tagore, which is called ‘Last Curtain’. To add a twist, a further challenge is to create a troiku from the ‘distilled’ haiku.

Last Curtain

I know that the day will come
when my sight of this earth shall be lost,
and life will take its leave in silence,
drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
 
Yet stars will watch at night,
and morning rise as before,
and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.
 
When I think of this end of my moments,
the barrier of the moments breaks
and I see by the light of death
thy world with its careless treasures.
Rare is its lowliest seat,
rare is its meanest of lives.
 
Things that I longed for in vain
and things that I got
—let them pass.
Let me but truly possess
the things that I ever spurned
and overlooked.
 
© Rabindranath Tagore