Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Map of India


Down and up my pencil goes
Drawing a great big elephant's nose.
Across the top a mountain range,
And up above, Tibet so strange.
Below it is the Ganges Plain
Where grow so many kinds of grain.
There's Delhi where lived the Viceroys,
Calcutta with it's pride and noise;
And in between, Benares old
Where stories of the gods are told.
Quite near to where the Krishna
and the Gadavari flow,
Is the Deccan Plateau
Which all the schoolboys know.
With Bombay on the left of us
Madras is on the right,
And Hyderabad in middle
Where ruled the Nizam's might.
Down further still is Tamiland
Which ends at Comorin.
With Ceylon like a pendant
Off India's pointed chin.

It's good to be back.