They will write and write, with their worn-out pens, casting small shadows from their small minds. Your greatest poem will be lost.

He used to say, “What is meant to go will go, how much of me can you really keep? Will you be able to keep this body? Will you be able to preserve this very hand of mine? What is meant to go will leave, and what is meant to stay will remain in my songs and poetry.”

He would also say, “The path I have walked can never be retraced; that is a great sorrow.” Now I understand the meaning of those words, as I look back and feel lost under the weight of my present pain.

But it is also true that I did not summon the past—it broke through the door and merged into my present. For forty years, I heard nothing of him, and now, for the past few months, I hear of him constantly. I have heard that he has a wife, but no children. The two of them live together in one house; he spends day and night buried in his library, his face always in books. There is nothing in his life except reading and writing. This frightens me—then the man I am about to see is not a whole person at all. How can someone who has never felt the anklets on his chest, the kohl in his eyes, the playful dance of Bal Gopal in his hands, ever be complete? I hear his wife is very watchful; some say she never let him receive any of my letters. But I cannot believe that. There was nothing in my letters that would warrant withholding them. Why would she be jealous of me? I am nothing but a dream from the past.

That afternoon of September 18th, 1930, when Mircea left our house, I never received a single letter or any sign of his existence. That very sorrow burned a part of my heart, smoldering on—my love suffocated in the poisonous smoke of disbelief. And now, after so many years, I hear that he told someone, “I sent her a photograph from the gates of heaven. I could not write to her, so I sent it through Khoka. Seeing my bearded face in the photo, she told Khoka, ‘Trim the beard from the sides.’”

I wonder, is that true? Did I ever see such a photograph? When did I see it, where was I standing? These days, the events of 1930 float before my eyes like pictures. I can see where Father was standing when he said, “He’s kept a full beard,” and where I was. But when Khoka showed me that photograph, where was I, and where was he? I cannot recall this scene at all. Besides, if I had seen such a photo, would I have only said, “Trim the beard from the sides, please,” and nothing more? Is that possible? No, no, surely I would have wept and