I Am Lying Often Alone In My Cottage These Days

Those childish dreams I had dreamt, in an utter innocence, In your love Like hugging that big dog was barking boisterous on phone In those summers' long quiet nights, in your street; Bathing on a hot summer's day naked In the brook passing by your yard; Or calling the Adhan on a quiet afternoon, In the lovely small mosque Of your lovely small village; And, that teaching women students poetry As a professor in a college, And having romance with! As that Indian lawyer-politician Had hundreds of such women-student admirers; Have all vanished, unfulfilled, forever. I am lying often alone in my cottage these days, A laid off, Wiping tears, Remembering the pompous days have passed In my life. That teaching in a country school, Or accompanying you in those fair summers To that distant dale, You were teaching politics in a school.