R. Parthasarathy
In a Hill Station, South India, 1919
Fern Hill, Lovedale, Glenmorgan, Wenlock Downs—
names we branded upon the flanks
of the Blue Mountains to tame an alien land.
And the train station—it’s pure Adlestrop,
though no meadowsweet blooms here in June,
and no blackbird sings close by the bare platform.
From parks and gardens the scents of England
drift through the air, and we find ourselves
once more amid the rolling hills of Malvern.
It’s something we’ve grown accustomed to—
the stubborn illusion of England-in-India.
How else could we have stayed on for so long?
R. Parthasarathy is an Indian poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of Rough Passage (Oxford, 1977), the editor of Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (Oxford, 1976) and the translator of The Tale of an Anklet (Columbia, 1993) and Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit (Columbia, 2017).