On The Death Of A Sunday Painter Poem by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

He smoked a cherry-wood pipe, knew all about cannas,
And deplored our lack of a genuine fast bowler.
My uncle called his wife Soft Hands.
Once in 1936 he sat in his Holland Hall drawing-room
Reading Ulysses when a student walked in.
Years later I read him an essay on D.H. Lawrence
And the Imagists; he listened,
Then spoke of Lord Clive, the travels of Charles M. Doughty,
"My dear young fellow . . . "
I followed the truck on my bicycle
And left early; his friends sat all afternoon
In the portico of a nearby house.

[From: Distance in Statute Miles]