This Time in London (Poem)

 

The literary journal South Asian Review was launched at Pakistan High Commission in London on 22 December, 2011.  Dr Waseem Anwar, Dean of Humanities, Professor and Chair (English), Forman Christian College (FCC) University, Lahore recited a poem “This Time in London”. It is placed below for the avid readers of poetry. Author’s note at the end further illustrates its literary merits.

 

 

This Time in London

 

… so it happened,

or was made to happen,

or may be bound to happen

by a crazy group of country folk,

some Pakis around the twirling globe,

their collective will and wish to blow

some kind of South Asian glow,

but this time in their lovely London,

London that was tamed to live, re-live

the striking spirit of a Lahori flow!

 

So, our Lahori-London of now or yore!

This time, God bless, your “mighty heart”

shall beat along our cheery part,

in the news bulletins of our design,

our cusps and columns of a Paki-brine,

its lyrical lines of some deadly-action,

O my dear dear Lahori-London!

 

O dear London! So you too,

the “busy” city of the busiest world

that’s been “too much with us” for long

with your stand-able “lea,”

your Proteus-ridden “sea,”

your big Big Old Ben

and its banditry bang, its splashing spree.

We dream here to bring your “lilac-time”

to our desi tamed literary-style,

when your “omnibus across the bridge

Crawls like a … [reddish] butterfly…”

and your anonymous “Cries” of the centuries old,

of “rosemary, sage and [fragrant] thyme”

jingle and mingle to intertwine

with “All fine herbs” of “London Bells”

or with the tasty spicy Lahori lore.

 

O Lahori-London of our special flair,

our current lands of utmost care!

Your “drooping West” your “pregnant East,”

your history of Thames’ thoroughfare

your theatres’ of multi-cultural repertoire,

your “London Bridge” that’s been “Falling Down”

amid the lingering colonial-post-colonial affair.

 

Yet O Lahori-London of today’s time!

Your unifying spirit of the humming birds,

your bustling business of the alleys dark,

your rounded round and underground,

your tubing tubes and U-tubes,

that movements control by the cobbles crowned.

Your cold, lonesome ghostly life,

your English exiles of the bleeding kind,

your ever forgetful shadowy streets,

where riots with royalties shall still compete

for a tranquil, tempting foggy frost

or potato-protests for mixing anew

to talk aloud of the solitude,

by filling in slowly with your airy smoke.

Hollow minds of this Prufrockian land

seem to merge with a Paki-brand

to come and go at their will, and stand

for an undue drill of a wasted-romance

or of Hamlet’s propelling dreary-dance.

You cruel city of the devil’s creed

that we now dare with our utmost screech,

with windy whiffs turn whirly speech

’bout burning pools and fishy lines

’bout mornings, evenings and afternoons

to be measured, tapered in teaspoons…

But still O London of the future past,

of the present beginning first or last,

we thank to say for fading times,

you let us re-live Lahori primes.

 

Waseem Anwar

(The author is Dean of Humanities at FCC University, Lahore, accessible at miaaon@hotmail.com or waseemanwar@fccollege.edu.pk)

 

 

NOTE: Recited on the 22nd of December 2011at the inaugural ceremony of the South Asian Review special issue 2010, 31.3 held at the Pakistan High Commission, London.  The allusions and references here are drawn and borrowed from William Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” and “The World is too much with us,” Alfred Noyes’ “Come Down to Kew in Lilac Time,” Oscar Wilde’s “Symphony in Yellow,” anonymous 17th and 18th century songs, “The Cries of London” and “London Bells,” Robert Herrick’s “His Return to London,” T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock,” traditional songs like “London Bridge is Falling Down” and many others of famous nursery rhymes.

 

 

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Last updated: 29 December 2011