Western Himalayas/Lahoul

THE air is thin and clear, tense and alive,
like the taut vibrant stringing of a lute,
and the high snow-peaks
are filed to razor-edge against the sky.
Between the water-whitened rocks, the long
bars of heaped boulders, and the shingle spits,
turgid with melted snow, sage-green and grey
the young river runs.
Oh no, not softly like the stripling Thames
but with a noise, and such a rushing and roaring
that never is the valley silent, always
the cry of waters
always the river:
this is his valley and he made it, so
remember the river
remember the river—
the Chenab.

Pale grey-green river, dark grey-green mountain sides,
goat-grass and tumbled scree and sheer-dropped crag,
there climbs the trackway and oh see, oh hear
the caravan,
the mules pack-loaded,
mules all melodious with deep-throated bells,
picking and stumbling, and where from, where to?
Whether to north
across the Baralacha to Ladakh
and wall-girt Leh, or climbing through the snows
to high uncharted Zanskar, and Yarkand:
or to the populous south
through misty fir-woods on the Pir Punjal
and Kulu with its drooping deodars.

Small villages,
ledged barley-fields,
the hard-won harvest—
and ever the little prayer-flag-flying monasteries—
last decadence of a long corrupt belief
but where we still may see
through the thick smoky gloom of butter-lamps
and all the tawdry tinsel, and the dirt,
faintly, the austere features of the Founder,
and hear, when the demon-searing gongs are stilled,
words that were long since spoken in the Deer-Park.

23 September 1943