“An Evening AirI go out in the grey eveningIn the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.I go out into the hard loneliness of the barren field of grey eveningIn the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.In the gathering darkness a long, swift train suddenly Passes me like a lighting.Hard and ponderous and loud are the wheels.As ponderous as the darkness, and as beautiful.I look on, enchanted, and listen to the sounds of lamentationIn the soft fragrant air.The long rails, grey-dark, smooth as a serpent, shiver, andA soft, low thing cries out in the distance,But the sounds are hard and heavy,In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.”

“Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.”

“In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl.”

“All day and all night my desire for you unwinds like a poisonous snake.”

“It's not the sound itself that bothers me; it's just the fact that it's loud. The loud sounds make it impossible to hear the soft sounds and the soft sounds are the ones you have to be afraid of.”

“I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way. ”

“In those hours when the night is still dark and cold, we see Alokananda waking up to the faint sound of stifled sobs. The sheets besides her are creaseless, sleepless. She gets up silently, her body: blank, a patchwork of frugal impulses. She gathers the warmth of her Pashmina shawl around her, the shawl that she knows still hides threads from a shirt or two of his: remnants of embraces, once feisty and long forgotten.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”