Lachung Poem by Aloke Mukherjee

Now, Lachung hugging me with warm blanket
To spend the night with dreams.
Why I come back to this snow-capped peaks?
Why the hullabaloo in the dining hall-
Why the thrown away beer cans on the snow?
Why the people come back here? why I come here again and again?

I have tears in the flask, the desolate evening in the rucksack-
I have covered the blue melancholy with jeans.

Degenerated we in living our life-
So this yearning for snowy grandeur
So this woman in front of me.

Yet this Lachung woman knows what
We mean to them-we are lots of money
in our wallets- we are glasses of wine
scattered around the day, we are the
Pollution, we are the people strutting in
Emptiness- this mountain knows.