Continuities

I

This is about the green miraculous trees,

And old clocks on stone towers,

And playgrounds full of light

And dark blue uniforms.

At eight I’m a Boy Scout and make a tent

By stretching a bed-sheet over parallel bars

And a fire by burning rose bushes,

I know half-a-dozen knots and drink

Tea out of enamel mugs.

I wear khaki drill shorts, note down

The number-plates of cars,

Make a perfect about-turn for the first time.

In September I collect my cousins’ books

And find out the dates of the six Mughals

To secretly write the history of India.

I see Napoleon crossing the Alps

On a white horse.

II

My first watch is a fat and silver Omega

Grandfather won in a race fifty-nine years ago;

It never works and I’ve to

Push its hands every few minutes

To get a clearer picture of time.

Somewhere I’ve kept my autograph-book,

The tincture of iodine in homoeopathy bottles,

Bright postcards he sent from

Bad Ems, Germany.

At seven-thirty we are sent home

From the Cosmopolitan Club;

My father says No bid,

My mother forgets her hand

In a deck of cards.

I sit on the railing till midnight,

Above a worn sign

That advertises a dentist.

III

I go to sleep after I hear him

Snoring like the school bell;

I’m standing alone in a back alley

And a face I can never recollect is removing

The hubcaps of our Ford coupé.

The first words I mumble are the names of roads:

Thornhill, Hastings, Lytton.

We live in a small cottage,

I grow up on a guava tree,

Wondering where the servants vanish

After dinner, at the magic of the bearded tailor

Who can change the shape of my ancestors.

I bend down from the swaying bridge

And pick up the river

That once tried to drown me.

The dance of the torn skin

Is for much later.