Alan Ross

Entering my father’s old office In Bankshall Street, the cries of paan sellers And Hooghley steamer sirens Drifting through shuttered windows, I feel like a thief –

The desks in the same places, The punkahs revolving, peons on their stations, But the whole room shrunken, As if by his absence, an empire meanwhile And himself come to grief.

Gazing...

Peering through bougainvillea that sits On their heads like mob caps, Monkeys set up advance posts.

Soon, hands to ears, as if telephoning, They establish links, At pre-arranged signals swarming

In formation. Temples’ bronze domes Attract them. They pick up stones With their tails

Hurling them like cricketers, Wizened businessmen On a company spree.

They take over the place, Noisy...

A Benedictine abbey, the S of a river Feathered by willows. The rural life Placed on a platter, barns, A church spire, cottages.

A farmer drives his cattle Over water-meadows, geese on a playing-field like footballers In 4 – 2 – 4 formation.

An atmosphere of grunt and mud, A liquid greenness.

Mist rises; even now it’s not fanciful To imagine it, laced with cyanide,...

Like lengths of spaghetti or croquet hoops Pipelines stacked on the jetty. Around them, cranes in suspension Claw like dentists’ drills.

Containers are less than their shadows Under sky the colour of putty, And heat, swooning to mirage, Nullifies effort.

Only tankers move in the Gulf, Their wakes unzipping silence, Their crews mute signatories To a war at half-cock.

Anticipating our zigzag, as if somehow By information or low

Cunning, she knew our speed And course, she contrived a need

For company. She came at us From all angles, silently, without fuss,

A whine on the asdic, homing in. We readied depth charges, prepared

Our tin fish. She moved away, Out of the sea’s swing and sway,

As if hurt, a rebuffed lover, Whose hide-and-seek was over.

We...