When It Rains At Night Poem by Amar Agarwala

Rain drenched nights always bring back memories

And stir-up forgotten old longings

That remain entombed somewhere deep at heart,

Surfacing only to taunt my senses -

Lending a touch of haunting melancholy,

With the passioned fervour of a lover.



I often succumb to their keen urgings

And lose my self in dreams of what was not,

What could have been in the days that have gone by

It is futile, yet, the craving engulfs me

In a mirage like grip, numbing my senses.



And like an addict I grovel in its bye-lanes

Intoxicated with fallacies of my past,

Trying to find respite from an old locked doorway

That guards an abandoned house of phantoms,

With nothing to reveal save empty promises.



The dreams, and the longings remain alive

So long as the raindrops keep pattering,

Against my roof-top and window panes,

Till I can hark its waters gurgling down drain-pipes.



Until, the silence of the night returns

With insects singing a dirge for my eschewed thoughts,

Which die no sooner than the sounds of hushed murmur

Subside and the rains bid me a teary adieu.



I stare on pensively into the soaked darkness

Knowing it will return once again

Some rainy night... lugging my wasted hopes & dreams

And like a seasoned addict I await anxiously.



For the wistfulness the rains would bring

Laced with sounds of fury and lightening,

That lights up my lovelorn heart - momentarily

And bestow upon it futile blessings

Born out from the smoking embers of my past.



Embers that my heart is adept at keeping aglow

And for reasons unknown, I let it blow on it,

For my wasted shell enjoys the chronic pain -

It is mystic art, that helps me pass my days.

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