I am backing home where you died. One year later, to find Changes that mask our surrender To the inevitability of life. I remember my Ambulance Ride With my friend whom you called Daddy. It took me a whole year To understand my loss. A lifetime is not enough To realize what it means to be human: We waste what we are given To crave for what we cannot have. This much I know by now As a maker of images: A face erased in front Of the mirror that is our Lord. Vithoba was seen by Tukaram Reflected in the deep end, Where the river was its own source And the ocean that waits for it. Perhaps when you struggled for breath As you finally choked to death, You tried to forgive your parent And the world he created with you. And so, finally, you grew Up to surpass your father-- Becoming a reflected sky In the water we call life. The first picture I took of you In the Princess Tsehai Hospital-- In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia In the last week of June, 1961: Sister Aiyyalij held you in her arms; And her hand was on your covered breast. It showed the finger on her ring As large as your closed eyes. Your struggle for a breath Began before you were born, And on December 4, 1984 In Bhopal it all came back. You struggled for breath all your life, Fighting for life, and looking for its sign-- An autograph of awareness, The reassurance of your own being. You don't know that you've left behind Images that tell, images that haunt, Images in which others will find The reflection that fills God's mirror. Where the Lord Himself twists and turns In agony that's the other side of bliss. His reverse is us, his children, A family that He craves to own. And, in the end, there's no loss, And there's no gain either We neither live nor die In the endless space of why.