Once In A Hospital Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Have you seen the face of a woman
whose husband is critically ill,
fighting for life in a hospital?
I observe such turmoil
and wonder what storms move within.

Between a once-upon and the road ahead,
there hangs an uncertainty—
yet life insists on holding on.
Drops of tears—she wipes them quietly,
with a handkerchief,
and tries to move in rhythm with the world.

A flicker of hope,
then resignation;
a moment of expectation,
then a gulf of disappointment.

From one such scene
I drift to another,
where life and its continuance
depend on signatures.
Will I be?
If not, when do I cease?

He holds her in his arms,
searches her eyes—forsaken, distant.
How does grief descend from the sky?
That same sky—
once a shelter in childhood—
now rains death upon the valley.

Why?
Because we are not them,
and they are not us.
Some celebrate death—
and call it victory.

Beginning in a hospital,
I arrive at a distant land—
I do not know how.