A REFLECTION ON CALCUTTA

No bend sinister will blotch its charms
(the College of Heralds might even frown
at the impertinence of a snotty brown
pretender to such noble devices as arms).

But those pursuivants would be ignoring
what the common folk must see,
a smiling, weedy ancestry
sprung from London’s listless whoring.

No matter, though. The child doesn’t repel.
And for one abandoned by its parent,
has even flourished, with more than apparent
grace. Bastards, more often than not, do well.

MEADOWS BARRACKS

Not sure of a terminal ‘e’
I type it in on a whim, and there
It is on a wikimap, neatly boxed in a square.
I pan the image expectantly.

The blanks surprise me, for the years
Have seemingly left those grounds
Untouched, all mottled greens and browns
Dotted with a few familiars.

I pick them off one by one. First,
The garrison church. All Saints, or so
It says, although at five I didn’t know
It, being still unversed

In such things. A vague derelict, a bit
Of a halfway point to school and back.
A blur of blotched grey and black
Is all I remember of it.

East of it the Barracks, another pile.
Abode of one who fancied my arm
And left her teeth marks like a charm.
A fleet of summer, verandah and tile.

Below, the dense blocks of the MH loom,
Slightly ominous, commanding the grid.
And somewhere amid
Other frames, beyond the mouse’s zoom

Must lie a home, now doubtless blent
With ghosts and such like, and air.
Barely recalled or loved, but where
A childhood, as someone said, was ‘unspent.’

VIEW FROM AN OFFICE WINDOW

Like some ancient monument it pushes its head
above the trees. Under the massed amorphous green,
unsuspected, the city quietly lies unseen:
the dome might be a mausoleum to the dead.

Streaked with ages’ dirt, it doesn’t require much
to transpose it (if one is so minded) to some fabled
riverbank, a watercolour or engraving neatly labeled
Robert Orme, or a Daniell or some such.

But I who know it’s no cupola-ed tomb
wonder in what repair the ratchet is, the date
of its last greasing, in what dubious state
preserved the precious optics in that room.

Now no less a reliquary than the chapel’s own,
those old Jesuits who turned an eye skywards
would hardly credit this rookery of birds.
There, I see two now…no, one: the other’s flown.

CLEOPATRA

All else notwithstanding (and it wasn’t much
by mores of time and place) history finds
for her. One can see her juggling brothers,
wooing Rome, looking for ominous signs
from the less kindly disposed others
who viewed Alexandria as a touch.

Not easy too her bit of cheek on the Tiber,
flaunting son complete with sire’s name:
that needed nerve. From their villas
the wives watched like hawks as she came
in triumph to shake an empire’s pillars,
silk and steel entwined in her fibre.

But she was doomed. Fate would intervene
with the Ides; and with her patron went
whatever Egyptian wind that bore her sails.
Actium did the rest. She was spent.
She came home to asps; and the tales
clung like unguents to embalm a queen.

PERMANENT WAY

The centuries were less than kind to you.
But then, virginity’s a tease for both bully
and suitor alike: you could hardly think your coy
rebuffs would keep either away, you knew fully
what history meant, that empires destroy
to thrive. And there was the odd flirtation too.

The suitors left but the ravisher, none too gentle,
gorged in heat and scourged you with his lust.
A cynical world watched your screams abate,
your flailing spirit ground to conquest’s dust,
a desiccated carcass. And now the tourists wait
like vultures, for tickets to Lhasa Central.

(This poem was prompted by the news that the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the highest, and surely the most spectacular in the world, is nearing completion.)

LEAVE POEM

Sometimes for no accountable reason,
engines suffer loss of power and stall.
Perfect pitch and throttle one moment,
the next has you battling against the fall,
all your sweating will impotent
against the fast and fated collision.

I’ve watched this happen with life’s pace.
All too often a brisk and even stride
suddenly flags, loses precious thrust;
and adrift I see purpose swiftly slide
to meet the rising ground, be one with dust.
And not sun but void stares one in the face.