Each year I decorate a Christmas tree
With trinkets
from Bohri Bazar, Germany, Japan.
You’ll send
home more from China
And Korea to
please, my daughter.
Each year I hang
the glitter
Of our children
up again.
Mother kept
our own tree secret
Until Christmas
Eve, when, doors thrown down wide,
It started us__a
dour
Cypress from
the garden, now enchanted
Bearing its
fragile globes and stars
Like goblin
fruits. I use
A less
dramatic Casurina pine,
As you plant
spices in Cologne, but though
Your backyard’s
fertile as a flower-pot,
They’ll not
grow native; yet are native
To the private
landscape where we lived,
Alien and
homegrown. Often
As a Christmas
treat the Raja sent
His official
elephant. We were shipwrecked on.
When the
haunches rose like a trial wave
We learned to brace and sway. Still practiced in equipoise
I teeter safe,
and brace to my uncertainties
Survive, Anglo-Indian
as a dark bungalow
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