I Know Dear, I Know Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

I know dear, I know
I still remember your grief.
We got that doll for you from Brussels.
Yes. Long time ago.
You loved her as if she was your life.
Suddenly she was seen no more.
We could not trace her.
You cried like a baby although you were not a child then.
I understood.
Your mother and I tried to console you.
But it was love in your heart,
the doll started living there.
It was not a physical existence,
it was a mental presence.
That present was suddenly missing.
You were sobbing in grief.
You have forgotten -
I still remember your pain.
I do.

The day I lost my job -
yes, I was in tears.
You didn't see,
your mother did.
She felt for me.
Yes, she still remembers the loss,
perhaps more than me.

I do remember her tears -
the day she left her house with me.
She had held my hand,
the more force she had put on my hand,
the more were the tears.
I didn't understand then.
Now I realize.
It's not easy to leave childhood at one place,
and then proceed with someone else to live adulthood.
It was a discontinuity,
it is a discontinuity -
what is left is left for ever,
all those smiles and tears live only in memory,
even the best memories are painful as they must recede,
it is like the red shift for the stars,
you will never see them,
only cosmic waves that will touch you although you won't realize -
once upon a time they were with you, your part,
then parted for ever.

I know dear, I know -
life's saddest moments lie dormant,
all of a sudden, they burst out like volcanoes,
then you remember -
you were scolded for no fault of yours,
you were robbed of your childhood,
you were exploited by your superior,
........
I know dear, I know
the world is not just.
Yet... you have to smile
in order to be, just to be.