Face Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Here you are.
Here you aren't.
This moment doesn't know
what the next will be.

This is the world.
This is how we live and die.

A long time ago,
I was under the spell
of a face.
Beautiful!

A face
became my heart.
Yes, my heart.
No judgment -
pure, tender.

With time
the face
became my head:
reason,
razor-sharp.

Then the face
disappeared
forever.

Here you are.
Here you aren't.
Life is a sequence
of strange events.

Neither you
nor I
recognize
the one who arrived
carrying a name.

We answer anyway -
to echoes,
to habits of love,
to the soft confusion
of being present
in a world
that won't hold still.

Here I am.
Here I'm not.
Still breathing
between moments
that refuse
to belong to me.