Waiting For Your Home Coming (For Ilu) Poem by Anuraag Sharma

By the time you are back home
I would be a wall—lone and lonely
in shambles, though
sans corners all, cornered so
cracks and wrinkles—time
has told upon, discoloured patches
here and there like autopsy—
is and gone....
Memory perches, half-sings
and is gone....
a timeless heat scorches its back
a little shadow—shabby and
shameless—spreads itself like
a begging bowl....mossed dents—little
mohallas of winged insects—green
remembrances swarm and
buzz under a humid 4.pm day.
Once it was a house and home
too with a roof, with walls
supporting its falling shoulders
like arms spread out in loving
coziness. Then it had ears, too
listened to homely whispers,
echoed some and let not
anything go out or anyone peep in....
It was oriental and oblivious
of its Babylonian ancestor.
Back home,
how would you recognise me, my Robin
at Rochester?