Look, that’s the Pole Star,

That which gleams with all its might.

And  that over there is Venus,

Shimmering as it were a star,

Wanting to be part of all this colour.

 

Join the tiny white dots

And there stands a big sheep.

Oh, and there peeps the lion,

Look yet, that’s our friend, scorpion.

Close your eyes and draw a fairy,

Now slowly open them. Ha! there she glides, looming large.

 

Look here, look there, look everywhere

White stars shining bright,

White and tiny, all alight.

‘Why are they so small pop?’

For they are very very far away from you and me and everyone son.

‘Very Far! how far pop?’

As far as our home from Uncle Henry’s.

‘Oooh! very very far!’

 

There on your right is a tiny white cloud,

In between, there is black all around.

Now that is the beautiful black, make no mistake about it.

No black if there was, how could you see all the stars, white and marvelous!

 

Lo! there she peeps from behind her curtain,

Shy as ever, round and big, whiter than chalk.

Moon she is son, well why ‘she’?

Beauty is ‘she’ my son, your mother is ‘she’.

Mother is beauty.

 

When you break your favourite toy and are sad,

Run over to the terrace, gaze at the bright night sky.

Toys you will find, toys that will never break.

Sad if you ever be, pour it all out to the blackness of the night sky,

And there you will find bright white happiness returned to you.

 

Look at you, how big you have grown,

Bigger than the sky.

You smile and the night smiles.

Those are your mother’s eyes.

So lovely they are, beauty they are.

You are big enough son, big enough…

 

‘I come here everyday pop.

Visit the stars when no one visits me,

And the lion still stands tall,

The fairy larger than ever.

The moon-she is no longer shy of me.

And the black, it is still the same, even with so much of my sorrow with it.’

 

‘Everything is the same in the sky pop,

Can you not see too pop?

Pop? Can you not see? Pop?’

 

‘Is that you then, the big one twinkling every now and then,

Nearer than the others?

Far you are not pop, me getting closer everyday.

Smile pop, you light the sky.

Tomorrow you and I shall smile together.

‘Pop and me’, me and you pop.

Forever and ever,

Brighter than the Pole Star’.

                                                 ~Sayan Kar

                                                  Ranchi, India