The Heart and Other Broken Things

When you left,

You did not disappear

Like a stone that will sink

In the deep waters of a tranquil lake

Never to be seen again;

 

You left

Like a steamer lurching its way

Across the turgid gray waters

Of the Hooghly near Babughat;

I have been watching your black smoke

Billowing in the blue skies,

And your reverberating silence

Echoing like the distant steamer horn.

 

I know

You left me nothing

Except empty shells of yesterdays:

But I needed something empty

To store my verses in;

 

It was only

In the silence of my first night alone

That I heard the beat of my broken heart

Steady, unshakeable and stirring;

 

It was in the darkness of your void

That I have found my soul

It will not allow bitterness a passage

The light will not flicker in the storm.

 

Diptesh Ghosh