In the beginning, all seems fine. You are the visitor, this is
The visit, that is the city, there is life, there the people.
Today is a newspaper, the crisp page you turn over with a frown.
Tomorrow is a checklist, someone to meet, a letter to write home.
And the past is what you choose to remember, what finds its way
To books, pictures, footnotes, what pours all things neatly into a cast.

Then, there comes a season of unease. It begins with your silence,
An evening draught carelessly brushes your shoulder under the trees,
And you feel very still. You go home; you switch off the TV,
Put the phone off the hook, and for a moment, you lean on the sill.
From the restless chatter, a clever sieve sifts words that do not leave,
Faces come lodged and refuse to stir. Slowly, someone's sorrow drifts
Into your mirror.

Outside, it wears eyes of lunacy, laughter, and the distinctions go.
You can no more tell the room from the street, the street from the dream-path.
When men walk, you hear their bee-babble, you see the secret scenes
They carry trapped in the petalled bulb of their eye unfurl, and you
Hear everyman's once-upon-a-time, desperate to keep the contours
Of one face running into another, to keep the unstill lips
Of one story from revealing where the other twists.

Yet in the beginning all seems fine.
When Dilli breathes, the cities inside are astir, shop, street, house,
And room with walls that spell their limits, that say, here I begin, this
Is me, wrapped in my bricked skin, limbs held to living by the pact
Of my gates. And I will turn back no visitor, I will turn back
No one from my gate. Come inside.

And you, who are innocent of questions, you open the door, each day,
You step out. And all things are simple, the city becomes life,
And the day is like a room with a number, and the year is a lodge
Near the railway station with a board that changes each December.
If you lose your way some hurried evening, you take the Ringroad,
Or you tap someone and ask, “What year is this? I am, I think,
A little lost today." And he says, “Are you new to this place?
It's the 50th year of independence. Now, calculate!"

But one somnambulant summer, when you're sure the Gulmohars
Will be in flower, yet they are not, you bus it to the Inquiry,
And there you act casual, "Are the trains late today? I'm expecting someone."
And he says, "Is that so unusual?"
And at night, you hear the birds moan, mutter, talk, hear the unquiet,
You put pictures of summer flowers on your door and turn off the light.
Then, you add 50 to the number 47, write 1997 on the wall, feel better,
And wonder, is that so unusual? Is that so unusual after all?

And you see, as in a mirror, so within, as in a dream,
So in a mother's lullaby, as in water, so in the voices
Of the cityfolk, as dark and light are distinct, so in the clutter
Of your visitor's suitcase, it.