Delusion

This kind of love, this delusion,
is neither of night nor of day;
not in half-drowned hours of labour,
but in a walk together,
upon this path, in this silent night.
Such an ending feels holy,
though yesterday’s deeds were stained.
Shall devotion be wasted
for want of the opposite sex?
Or is it instead
a proposal to break innocence?
A girl, lifting her hand,
answered the call of the storm
and surrendered—
and still life clung on.
The coloured hem of her sari
glimmered with borrowed splendour,
but it was illusion,
betrayal,
a fraud against a life,
a severing from a household.
The poor girl laughed,
“All I want is a single plate of rice.
Love would have been enough.”
Thus she revealed how some lives
dwell in the false flame of love,
caught in the shimmer of delusion,
surviving only on the hope
that someone will come,
bringing light—
whether it be love or bread.
And so life drifts forward,
ever waiting,
gazing toward the horizon line,
where the ghost-fire trembles—
the delusion of love.