GARBOESQUE
Darling, I hear you talk of fragility,
how we are lonely, loneliest, when we’re in touch
with the thousand, the hundred thousand
lonelinesses out there,
wherever ‘there’ may be,
and I welcome the lack you speak of,
the absence of human connection,
and hesitate to call this momentary lapse of aloneness love,
because it isn’t,
it’s only flesh slapping against itself.
What you call loneliness I call pleasure,
which, considering what you and I do
for employment and for... love,
is the best part of our day,
to be alone in a room, tapping a way into the world,
into the void, into the word,
at one with one’s addiction to solitude,
as time dissolves
and we know how much better this is
than to be with someone
lost inside their few square inches of screen,
how much better it is to be alone.
Jeet Thayil is a poet, novelist, librettist and musician. His new collection of poems is 'I’ll have it here'
(This article appeared in Outlook’s Valentine’s Day 2025 special issue on love and loneliness in the era of technology.)
(This appeared in print as 'How to be alone')
