Recovery 17.

Recovery 17

 When from this feverish, decrepit body,
 as day by day, vitality dissipates,
 youth abandons this shriveled nest
 till only infancy is left.
 In the closed room, shut off from the work of life,
 the infant pines for its mother.
 The stripped-down self longs
 for shelter from the one
 whose appearance
 gives our short lives
 their earliest honor.
 "Stay with me": our small
 cry to the world
 that we want to live.
 This wonder again and again
 enters the mind:
 With life's luck, the world calls,
 and mother comes to stay,
 the mother, ever old--yet always new.

 21 January 1941 (evening)
 Shantiniketan