Morning threads itself in scales, a fisher’s breath becomes the light of Baker Street
Like a self-crossed tide that never came ashore, London awakens in Baker Street
A reed-song crosses continents, a scarlet hymn of peppers and departures
Billboards bow like discarded ardors, of Watsons and Morstans in Baker Street
A cat surveys a petty oracle; a green haze entangles nocturnal coins
Passengers and prophecies deboard in disguise, or even as ghosts in Baker Street
A poet’s lamp flickers like the notes of the clarinetist at Covent Garden station
The violin argues with ash and tobacco as the dusk unfolds at 221B Baker Street
Sherlock, your deerstalkers now crown the fog like crude logic’s mimicries,
But none expect Pitt the younger’s apparition to dawn at Baker Street.
At Blackfriars, the waves fold the world into small, obedient paper boats,
The bench rehearses strangers’ exits against the red-checkered walls of Baker Street
I am a late votary at the newsstand that headlines the royal family’s small sins,
Lovers like, unbelieving moths, perform selfie rites at Baker Street
Glossy posters preach salvation in fonts that have dulled like unwanted coins,
The city will erase them with a street-cleaner’s broom, tomorrow at Baker Street.
I tuck the apologies like a folded ticket, in the remote geometry of my palm,
Watching a small quarrel forgotten for an umbrella’s shelter at Baker Street.
A child’s abandoned bottle spools like a cylinder in the drizzle,
A shoeblack polishes oaths to my heel, and times my exit at Baker Street.
Do not recall, O Qasim, the sugarcanes crushed in the rolling mill
Even Tagore’s lost and found Gitanjali was resurrected in Baker Street.
Photograph Courtesy: Kev, Pixabay.
Arup K. Chatterjee 