Split

The palm trees move to gentle breeze
The burbling of the brook is bliss
and all around-tranquility.

In the city merciless
It’s probably a hundred degrees
the buses and the trains don’t cease
and people move like clockwork.

Here in the nipa forest
The rain drops round the huts
Neither I nor grazing creatures
care if we’re wet or not.

In the city full of fret
Sudden showers rage,
drenching the miserable
like rodents in a cage,

and here time seems eternal
like a slow heartbeat
as close a place to heaven
as any place could be,

And yet
the city grey and cold
is where I long to be
for one of life’s most dearest
lives in the heart of it.