Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

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 have 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 signboard
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 coup?.
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 hide me.
The dance of the torn skin
Is for much later.