Just back from a quick 2 day trip to Calcutta.
The before and after poems say it better.

Before :
Calcutta
Sweet siren of endless lanes
matriarch of regal arch and dome
I try aloof, but
my blood quickens at your name
(like the beat of a drummer at a puja pandal)
thirty nine years away
is long
far too long to condense
(how later I learned to push into a bus)
into one spare afternoon and a few more hours
perhaps, this is best.
This incompleteness


http://blueline.goobertree.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22498

After:
Stern Queen Victoria
Empress of the realm
Still reigns over marble and green
Yet the memory of Mother’s eyes
tugs at me, the many homes
And many lifetimes traversed

My scale changed
Even as the light on the lake
Reflects the shimmer
of many sunsets past

http://blueline.goobertree.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22520