It’s easy to create a romantic moment,
Of a blood curdling past
If you were born in a colonial city
And went to a convent school,
For there are attractive vestiges of the British Empire
Hidden behind rose bushes,
In graveyards and memorials,
Towering above trees, church spires and school towers,
Hiding in musty volumes inside teakwood library shelves.

If you miss the literary argot
You could still conjure images through geographical entities
Names such as Thornhill Road, English cemetery,
Mayo Hall, Alfred Park, All Saint’s Cathedral,
Even call out names of flowers and people
Bougainvilleas, pink cecias, laburnums, Clives, Montroses, Benedicts,
Or just visit the St. Mary’s school
And fantasize upon its connotative meaning
Which a Hindi-speaking rickshaw puller will not fail to understand.

All shadows of road crossings
Memorials, public spaces, churches,
Flowers, libraries and family names,
Function as faded bookmarks
Leading you to the throbbing past
Where you can still create your
Guardian angels and ogres, seraphs and sprites
Who can either provide you with some profound knowledge
Of the shady unknown or threaten you out of your home.
 
It is easy to imagine in a Christian-sounding school
The sainted wisdom of Europe
Or the equivocation of the devil,
Where archangels can lead you to some comfortable arbor
Where you can induce the fantasies of benign scholarship
Or Mephistophelian demons
Who can lift you by the scruff of the neck
Beyond the tamarind trees
Into a darkness hard to see.

The days are inscribed by shafts of heavenly light
The night super-inscribed by an almost unreal darkness
That will not allow you to go astray,
Kiss your girlfriend under the staircase
Bunk classes or fudge your maths exercise,
Or commit any other transgression and
Finally if you are confused of categories,
Afraid of the dark, uncertain of the past and present,
Remember, no one can help you.

 © Mukesh Williams

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