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.