The Storm

There was little to tell it from

The other places we passed, Deoband,

Khatauli, the peasant towns of western

Uttar Pradesh. The June day was windless,

The sky a boiling white. The bus had made

An unscheduled halt. The driver was talking

With a garage hand. We waited for him

To start and passed the time looking at

The hoardings on rooftops, the women

Standing in littered doorways with children

At their hips, the men, unshaven,

Sitting beside parked trucks, drinking tea.

Two blasts of the horn sounded and those

Who’d got down to stretch their legs

Hurried back. As the bus picked up speed,

I saw it quivering in the heat-haze, a place

Whose name I hadn’t known nor asked,

Which I sometimes think was Shiraz, or a firth

In the North Sea from where the skalds set out.

The next day there was a storm,

And the hail melted as fast as it fell.