Cat

Again and again through the day

I meet a cat.

In the tree's shade, in the sun, in the crowding brown leaves.

After the success of a few fish bones

Or inside a skeleton of white earth

I find it, as absorbed in the purring

Of its heart as a bee.

Still it sharpens its claws on the gulmohar tree

And follows the sun all day long.

Mow I see it and then it is gone,

Losing itself somewhere.

On the autumn evening I have watched it play,

Stroking the soft body of the saffron sun

With a white paw. Then it caught

The darkness in paws like small balls

And scattered it all over the earth.