Persons change, personalities alter
With the passage of stars and comets
The wearing of years
The procession of moments

Even I change but do not notice
The minute variations in my nature
The halting gait, the balding pate
The stoop developing in my posture

My memory remains rooted in the past
Generating expectations out of old friendships
Long lost emotional threads
Desperate for a needle of kinship

Which I try to revive, revitalise
Very often stumbling and failing
For they have moved on and so have I
In life’s tide and ebbing

Why have you changed so much, I ask
Not at all, they say
Why have you changed so much, they ask
Not at all, I say

Two lost memories frozen in antique ice
Cannot unravel the mystery
Which has consigned two old friendships
Into the pages of history

Subir Chakraborty / 25th May 2018