Durban
Memsahib, let the world’s defection
Be, in this other, resurrection.
Let these shores where still is homage
Raise up again your medaled image,
To sanction, by viceregal presence,
The vacant forms of our senescence:
Genteel petitions, Rugby, Emma.
(Houseboy, cookboy, driver, amah;
None of them sullen, none unruly.
Here is lower than the coolie.)
Here are the slow, spent days of remittal, —
Become, unearned, the raj in little.
Where the surfboards nick the breakers,
Where new stock issues find no takers;
And where the sea, as in subpoena,
Cries, too familiarly, “Edwina …”
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