~ The Night, from outside my house ~

--The Night--

1.
Today I have become the night.
Let no light touch me.
Let the meaning I have been cease.
Let my body become a different body.
Let all names signifying me disappear.
Pushed by an irresistible impulse
to become the night
I arrived here.
Let me become the night today.
I have a single aspiration today—
to become the night,
to abolish the ugliness in everything
and install beauty in its place.

2.
How long must I wait
before it is night ?
One cannot recollect the day's looks
unless it is night.
The moon and the stars will not arrive
unless it is night.
The whole sky will be a wilderness
unless it is night.
How do I get the time
to bring back to my mind
your celebrated eyes
unless it is night ?
How can the tuberoses of my steadfast love
blossom into expanding whiteness
unless it is night ?
How long must I wait
before it is night ?

3.
Describing that night is unholy.
Remembering the eyes of that night
is also unholy.
Years pass,but that exquisite night
does not re-enter my mind
that's still, and on the way to holiness.
Some unfinished poem
was inscribed on that night's face.
In the lamplight of my soul
I had once read its lines.
I am the despair of that poem,
and I dissolve
in the night.
I am already an ingredient of the night,
but the splendour of that night
(which, once upon a time,
was my own body's splendour)
does not return,
and years pass.

-- Prabashini Mahakud Tiwari,

Source: An old man, a close friend's grandfather suggested him to read this poem and having read it he sent it to me.