Bringing the Past Alive

Today I met an old girl friend whom I had been supposed to marry before I met the lady who became my wife and fell madly in love. It was in an ancient rickety lift in the High court. This is what I wrote:-

To old loves, like still born suns
Like the stale night on my window sill
Like the stale love on the crumpled sheets
All the waves that broke before
They reached the broken shore
The born, the unborn, the never born
The words we spoke,
The hands we held
The paths we walked,
And now you are gone.
They told me that they
Had made a day for you
And posted it on teeming inter net
Hoardings hoarded on teeming streets
Monuments made of stone and blood
In forgotten parks existing by curial writ
They told me this day came before the spring
Before the you and before the me and
Before the race of man was made,
Before the night and before the day
Before the deep was parted
Before there was any living thing;
Seems like the spring came before the fall
There was no summer at all.
And like old loves, we dance a measure
And like old loves we drift apart
Our lives mingle like hot breath in winter
Our loves they stay, they leave,
Not near, not far
Beneath the skin, behind memories
They lie, they lie like bed time stories.
Just like the time I met you
Going up on an ancient lift
We talked we smiled,
Like continental drift.


BY PROTIK PROKASH BANERJI