Flowers with colours mainfold,
and varied fragrances;
they give me their smiles,
my dear sweet flowers.
Sapphire, green, red,
and other hues as well;
I come at daybreak and feel
enchanted by their sight.
Nodding and swinging flowers,
I draw near to pluck them
and fill my basket-
and the flowers smile!
They smile as I view them,
and also as I pluck them;
and they smile on when I weave
of them a garland.
For Krishna’s image,
I’ve made this garland;
and like my younger brother,
it smiles at me. It was with a unfailing instinct that
Valliappa has chosen
all along to make ‘flowers’ the key image of his children’s songs,
for as the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram has explained and
exhorted:
“Be like a flower...open, frank, equal, generoua and kind....
A flower is open to all that surrounds
it.... It exerts a
spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy
and a beauty. |