Where Is My World! Poem by Bishnupada Sethi

Her face half-lit by moon, lurking through a skylight,
and half-hid in darkness, permeating my room,
haunts, though mute, like a raaga left midway by a singer
ages back.

And then seasons cascade, alternating moment to moment,
spring and winter, rain and autumn:
turning my home into a primal tryst
the evening almost lingering into eternity
within four arms:
in the entwined bodies of ours
an enchanting earth-odour.

Am I that blessed one, who has come back
once again into the womb
of a divine mother?
May be, but wherefrom?
Where had I been so long?
And which city is this?
There is no one on the street outside
It is all quiet and tranquil;
Silence pervades everywhere,
all signposts are blank.
And a mist erases the identity
of one and all.

I get up in the midnight.
No one in my arms.
But where are my arms-
my body, my mind?
I fail to locate me in the dark.
And a voice from nowhere tells
I am not in my home where I thought to be.
'There never was a home for me' -
that was the refrain of the raaga
left midway by the nameless singer:
'There never was a home for thee.'