On A Christmas Eve Poem by Ayan Dasgupta

The night is cold and the streets colder
With the heater working
In these coldest months -
It's Christmas Eve.

I stand at the window and look out into the dark night
To see a few yellow blotches of street lamps
At a distance marking their own frontiers
With solitary circles of light on the snow

The streets are cold but it's warm inside
And tonight
They go perfectly well together.

What more could've happened on a Christmas Eve?
The wind blows hard and white flakes of snow
Tarnish the dark night sky like fine polka on black silk -
She is gone.

She is gone but left Muschi -
Gone but she left the cat
And crumpled linen on the bed undone,
Pictures strewn all over the floor,
Piles of books rotting together in heaps...

Starting at this very moment
One would need a next hundred years to know them all

I don't feel like reading them now,
Words never mattered to me
And silence - even less.

I can never look back
Have I ever looked back?
Have I ever?
But instead I stare at bits here and there
Bits that haven't yet been packed...

What else could've I done?
Feeling lucky she has left
And her cat purrs...

It is dinner time now!

I prepare the table and look outside
Into those cold streets
And into this windy night -
I look outside on a Christmas Eve