The British
Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
Dreams Lost In Water
No distance ever separates
Dreams and desires
No mirror ever dissolves
Reflection and water
In one's eye
What graph would you make
Of lines of thought?
The triangle of pain
Is without any angle
1914 V: The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam
Translated into English in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald
I.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
II.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
An Introduction
I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don't write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
I Knew A Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek).
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
By A Swimming Pool Outside Syracusa
All afternoon I have been struggling to communicate in Italian with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun to resemble the two male characters in my Italian for Beginners, the ones who are always shopping or inquiring about the times of trains, and now I can hardly speak or write English.
Don'T Ever Come, O December
Look December
Don't ever come now!
Look, December
Deserts unnumbered have expanded in me.
All my rivers
Are silted with the sands of loneliness.
Now only I
And the weight of my loneliness
Remain together.
Lighthouse
Tell me, O moisture
Halted in the eternity of my eyes
Which stagnant epoch has confined you!
God weeps rain
On some land of pain
Why only one dropp of my tear
Has stuck on His lashes.
Tell me, O breeze of shores
The name of the city
The Colonel
What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
Consolation
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
My English Sucks …..[english ('poor') : Almost Medium Length; Education And Life; Ph- Inspired]
When I were schooled english wernt my thing.
My scores in English lurning no bells done ring.
Yea I grajaded but ain't english smart ….no lie!
Come end a school year the teach said 'By Bri.'
Was same in bilogy, math, jografy all that stuff.
I done did my best and guess my best were enough.
I did done grate at ball games and in trak run the mile.
I was a THREEletter man and made them girls smile.
Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan
They sent me a salwar kameez
peacock-blue,
and another
glistening like an orange split open,
embossed slippers, gold and black
points curling.
Candy-striped glass bangles
snapped, drew blood.
Teeth
English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.
English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.
English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
The Little Black Boy
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
On The Death Of That Most Excellent Lady,
(Español)
Mueran contigo, Laura, pues moriste,
los afectos que en vano te desean,
los ojos a quien privas de que vean
hermosa luz que a un tiempo concediste.
Muera mi lira infausta en que influiste
ecos, que lamentables te vocean,
y hasta estos rasgos mal formados sean
lágrimas negras de mi pluma triste.
Spectrogram Of A Pictorial Poem (Translation By Prof. Ghulam Jilani Asghar
The walls have come out of doors
Narrows are the passages, many are the footprints
On the steep rock where the sun lies half reclined
Jumping over one's shadow, falling headlong
Is the ultimate truth, nothing new about it
Dreaming some old dream
Eyes know not how much water has come out
Of their oceanic depths.
It is easy to cross a river
but how difficult it is to find a foothold on its banks.
Arrival At Santos
Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you
Where Do You Search Me
Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein
Na Ekant Niwas Mein
Na Mandir Mein, Na Masjid Mein
Na Kabe Kailas Mein
Mein To Tere Paas Mein Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Mein Jap Mein, Na Mein Tap Mein
Na Mein Barat Upaas Mein
Break Of Day In The Trenches
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German