Gandhi's photograph in the new airport lounge
is more than fifty years old.
Every time I look into the old man's eyes,
he calmly hands my promises back to me.
Land, our land,
there is so much land between us now.

And the rain keeps on falling
across the distance of my country.
I lock myself into my room or watch lamely
stray scraps floating down the Mahanadi.
My own pain comes from the rain,
riven from the clouds of my own realization.

At times I feel I have been here for ever.
The rain of August won't wet the earth any more,
the distance's eyes brim merely with tears.
But this is the life with my land I can share:
Flowers on the Tomb that can't leave memory behind,
the distance growing year by year in grief alone.