Fly High or ‘Lok na pok’*
Breed, feed, drop wings, die, all within the norm
Look up perchance, sight the big bird rising
Screech, curse or just go wisely sighing
‘Poor one, that, plunging into emptiness,
How will miss all earthy mud and marshes!’
Strange ’twill be if the air-borne big bird should
Change course, crash-land and catch a slushy cold.
No, it just pulls itself up, sights set high
Not for it, this befogged deathly mud pie.
Or at least, go alone in thy brave way
May yet light the wing buds of a mutant stray.
‘Lok na pok’ is a Bengali expression meaning ‘ the common people
who cavil at pioneers are like crawling worms’
Lok means people, pok means worms and na may be taken to
mean ‘are’.
Swami Sampurnananda; 20 Dec. 2003, 1 p.m. Lalgarh Kuthia veranda.