Something returns to me now, In my eyes, your fading smile; Points and mocks my unloved state. And from deep within, coarse and Serrated feelings of unclassified love, Hack my sleep, hack my peace, hack me.

I sit with my fists clenched threatening My magnified shadow on the opposite wall. That alone is left, alone just like me, To speak to, to cry with, sieved in Stray beams of this night's diminishing light.

Image after image, word after word raise, From the currents of this night; the wind Stops and comes back; wave after wave Of unceasing movement of tree, leaf and cloth In substance, in the transparent tears that Fill my eyes, in hope, in despair, in recall!

Even these sparse words refuse to hide, the stark naked turmoil each unforgiving living day seems to bring in again and again. Death is what would be better state; yet Why is this anguish still insisting to live? In what slight hope? Awaiting what certainty?

Even, even a sudden death is not for me. And On a night like this I must console myself With the fact that to sleep is to forget a little and thus die for a little while. This I must tell myself Knowing the futility of remembering you and your words and the way you laugh.

But right now I am most helpless. My ragged breathing is helpless. And so is this flow of line after line. What can I do? You return.

Sometime in 1999, IIT Kgp.

I wrote this poem one winter night at Kgp, almost two years ago.On rereading it,I find it's forced in some places.But I remember writing it then, in a sudden rush of words that would have brooked no mental editing.

Sitting in the sun,

I am a daytime firefly, hovering over the blue sky, watching my shadow in the fountain below.

I seep, the glare bouncing off the naked whiteness of the sheet with blue ink.

I recall a lunch I once ate, reclining on a bench under a maple tree and the gaze of one whom I had just kissed.

I think now: that perhaps it was just a figment of imagination, a dream tinged with sudden forceful reality.

I note Time has passed and in it's passing had abraded the pain, into a smooth rounded reality, sans any jagged edges.

I don't question anymore the scheme of things, fate, right or wrong, as these things play themselves out like a toy slowly unwinding.

I hope I would find meaning in how I live, with an increasing awareness of the vastness and mists within, in which I move dancing slowly.

I span thus: the days from one winter to another cold winter.

[ A ] Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard The great geese hoot northward. I could not see them, there being no moon And the stars sparse. I heard them. I did not know what was happening in my heart. It was the season before the elderberry blooms, Therefore they were going north. The sound was passing northward.

[ B ] Tell me a story. In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story. Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. The name of the story will be Time, But you must not pronounce its name. Tell me a story of deep delight.