Knock, Knock

Debmalya Bandyopadhyay

They arrive when you are frilled from the day's ripples,
the night sparkling spirits and stone. They sit

at your table and drink the Prosecco with you,
spitting questions out for you like grape seeds. You stare

out into the dark, trying to recall why you are,
where you are, what makes them come

to you tonight. The stars glint above like teenage eyelashes
wink like little clues in the dark. But you are past that phase

of ancient frivolities, suddenly reminded of how light tears
through a distance so enormous, it almost beats

the grief stretching its arms in you. They don't understand
length. They don't recognise what it's like to be you, alone—

a scarecrow in a field of corn and cadavers, waiting for
birds. How long have you been solitary, shore? How long

since the air had settled around you like a widow’s sigh? Even
the strongest façade cracks for the gift of light. Come on, turn

your lamps on. Show them what a river you are. What astonishing 
songs flow through your body; even the asp’s rattle

sleeping in you. Such is love’s graveyard, housing ghosts that rise
by the moon and go knocking at doors. Don’t turn them away

into the night, let them hold the softness of your hands
and dissolve through. Aren’t you the one who is alive?

Writer’s Notebook

This poem was written shortly after I moved to England to pursue a doctoral degree. What followed me for several months was a loneliness that cut like the new knife’s blade. To add to it, I was dealing with several dimensions of loss—that of old friends, family, and the past. Each night, the shadow of a despair would knock on my door and loom over me, leading to an existential crisis. This poem was born out of the flicker of hope I endeavoured to slowly forge in myself during those hard months—trying to accept everything just as they were, and let the ghosts pass through me without a fight. The poem acts as a reminder to celebrate the present for whatever it is, rather than trying to measure it against what it had been. It wishes to reaffirm that there is no loneliness hope cannot illuminate.

About the writer