Incomplete Business

I have stayed this long winter night awake
To finish this letter I shall never send you.
I call you to honor promises you didn’t make,
With this, my seven hundredth letter to you.
I imagine you home again by the window,
Where the fragrant jasmine and rose shrubs grow,
Humming a wistful, forgotten love tune,
Under the sparkle of the silver moon.
In that, incomplete, half-imagined land,
Always with jasmine scented hair you stand.

But I am tired of shadows, I am lost,
I cannot recall the way to your distant door.
Already my frozen ankles can feel the frost,
I cannot stand unloved for evermore.
If you tell me that one thing I must know,
I promise to stay thus, and never go:
And not just because I ask, or insist,
But show me you care that I too exist,
If not for love, then like the jasmine tree,
Be tender to the night, be kind to me.

Diptesh Ghosh