When into that city ravaged to shreds by combat which recently raged there, we walked hand in hand,

I said to Radhika: “This tractor factory is where we held out for weeks, grim jawed but feeling tender towards fellow patriots, feeding on grubs, frostbitten fingers on triggers, waiting for the ambush.”

I said, “This is where, when spring came, and I saw a straggling tulip raise its blood red finger tentatively at one of those shattered windows, that I was taken back to that room of my youth, which was always aslant with

afternoon sunlight, and where I twirled the air as a fugue unspooled from the gramophone, wishing for a multiplication of radiance, such as that of now as I promenade through these ruins holding on to your slender palm.”

“Radhika," I said, “welcome to my firebombed city, still blazing like your dark lord in the steppe. Welcome to its (and so my) insufficient heart.”