To this same field no cowherd comes today
No magic flute weeps enchantment at the banyan root
The lightning flashes at the edge of the cloud dark sky
In the old remembered way

Didn’t she know bad times in haste
The rooster’s red comb twists?
Didn’t she know the heart’s dull waste
Is the miser’s clenched left fist?

That of all the grand capitals we know,
The heart in reckoning fails
Didn’t she know, whom I know so
Like the sea beneath my nails

Today I’m here again, but the picture’s tilted
Unlike that lost monsoon’s last hours
There were rain-drenched flowers in the garden
Morning glory showers
 

((Anjana Basu's poems have been featured in an anthology published by Penguin India. Her work has appeared  in Wolfhead Quarterly, Amethyst Review, The Blue Moon Review, Kimera and Recursive Angel.)