if only we’d met sooner

maybe you would’ve liked me better when i was young

when i’d have jumped barbed walls and fences

braved mosquitoes and cold nights

for the sake of silly dalliances

when i’d on a whim take overnight buses

in the vague unrequited hope of half-amused kisses

when i was more willing, under the aegis

of my naiveté, to take my chances 

put aside my dignity and wonder if every passing

fling would be one of life’s great romances

ignorant of how in every beginning lurk the seeds of an end

and every birth a death portends

that with colours of a desolate dusk

every dawn will forever be replete

mindless that every heart-ache comes

in the garb of a promise sweet

maybe then i’d have had the leisure

and the heart to indulge in love or the pleasure

of a couple of cigarettes shared in the rain

then, unmindful of the impending doom

maybe, the craving for your body

would’ve brought me to your room

at some late hour of some lonely night forlorn 

or maybe just the vanity in my own