Classic Poem

Sir, the list is ready -—
things you cannot take away
from this exile, your humble clerk.
This ancestral earth, its plain existence,
of which a part is this I, your servant's self.
[...]
Cool water from the well, an eye for books
the sudden shower in summer afternoons.
Love of one's kind, the pang of memory
shot through with the hope of going home to Bengal.
Send me away, O World -—
yet linked with the shaed of ancent trees
immemorial joys are stored in my heart -—
the courtyard tulsi altar, the rained rivrside temple, the charm
of the native tongue.