The
Last
by Samartha
Vashishtha
Returning to the city after a gap of five years
will forget so easily my name
like
it was pebbles I drew from its fame.
Have I, somewhere along knowing this student politics,
lost
the sense of the sunlight receding from bare mountains?
Now younger than most, taller than many
when I walk again this crowded Mall road
these rocky hands stroking my pampered soles
seem
colder and more hostile than ever
And when I show her my new MS of poems
my childhood friend replies
your book doesn’t reach our city of Simla.
