Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

THE HOUSE OF WAITING 

It’s all dust and old newspapers and books and notebooks

Big folio registers and diaries and files

And outdoor clothes gathering dust in heaps

Never disturbed in years now

Boxes made of steel sheets 

In all shapes and sizes full of old issues of magazines

Bedspreads and blankets and quilts no longer in use

It’s not a dead house but a dying one

There are smells lurking in its corners 

Some dank some sunshiney full of motes

In the air caught in beams of light

From the wide old windows

It’s a shabby tired house, much suited

To slow decay, but proliferating in Calendars 

Showing this month this day today

And clocks showing this hour this minute

With a little variation from the bedroom to the kitchen

From the hall to the prayer room

Food is cooked though, mostly fresh

And there is water and tea and curd and fruit

And sherbets. It waits cheerfully enough

For death and the final disintegration

It may look sad but it is not afraid.

There are flowerless flowerpots by the front door.

Few visit but those who do, do not starve

They go with bellies full. 

The House of Waiting is absent-mindedly 

Sprawlingly, lazily, impersonally kind.