Warm Tibetan prayer flags wilt at twelve noon; the sun
is mildly out of tune
like a weak trumpet in an opera: a few shops still sell local
Roxy liquor and the loud scent of December
swallows up
the sleepy mist and the redness of geranium saplings
on wooden tubs
in Delo Hill in Kalimpong
Walking along the jagged cliff
like a local guide without a job during quarantine,
I stroll and do not look back
on anything
The track is deeply freckled with deafening
silence of the lonely pine trees
And, still uphill,
the old solitary monastery on the cliff indifferently looks at me,
and I look at it hard;
our eyes lock like fellow historians, now retired
I knock at its ornate sandalwood door;
Sandalwood essentially knows how to engage stars, the universe
and all metaphors of a yellow afternoon, old,
on a hilltop
The scented heavy door
I have always smelt on my palms for long is now closed
Nobody lives there anymore
