Cloudbursts

It rained all night in your sleep
and you did not hear it
except that something was washed away, and rebegun
without your knowing it.
Neither the film of sweat on your throat
nor hunger-
what is that world outside the window,
an electric light on a porch,
the inky movement of palm leaves,
and the street lights in a lane,
which your sleep throws a screen over?
And that other presence, seasonal, spontaneous,
you conjure up in your absence
beyond apprehension or memory
when you were least at one with yourself
and is gone by the time it is morning.

Amit Chaudhuri