It was the missing decade
of my life that came back,
late on one clammy night.

Wearing your visage
of a foraging girl
at the foot of a tranquil Vesuvius.

Spent though I was,
for those decades still with me,
I sat awake listening to the warmth of open windows.

The decade came for me,
in figments and memories
wheezing a few questions.

This room is known to me,
as is the night,
as is the flaying heat,

and the carved words
on the creaking charpoi
by some distant uncle.

I melded with the light squeezing through
into this dark, sulphurous room
like an exile away from my maker.

The decade came to me
and sang lullabies
of princes who never were.

I have kept my vigil
until the mirror ran dry
and returned to sand.

The decade wears me now
as I am, the hunting boy
by a shimmering Ganges.