#Poetry

Cultivated by English the isles, they sought
O Albion your sea-encircled coast.
What an interpreter of the maps visualises
To the feet, hands never known

Till like the Normans on your fair sand trod and tasted
Geoffrey’s rhapsodical recipes of the national tongue.
At Lakeland, lithosphere’s rainbow, poets met their muse
And your vast, icy cliffs guard Dover’s moon-blanched coast.

A ring of knights from Middle ages the Stonehenge imitates, 
Belts of blooms crown fields, alleys… the Oxford countryside.
And lo the heather carpeted moors! The quaint, rain-washed streets
By the charter’d Thames, now a scurry of cafes and the tube.

O what wealth these goldened folios have brought,
Studying your body in the silhouettes of words, the maps of literature!

Anam Tariq

Anam is a poet, bibliophile, book reviewer, nature lover. She holds an M.A. in English. She has recently joined Air Class 1-on-1 as a part-time English teacher. Her poems have appeared in the poetry anthologies ‘Going Off The Grid’ and ‘India Without A Mask: The Poetics & Politics Of The Pandemic’, INKochi Cultural eMagazine, The Punch Magazine, New Reader Magazine, The Alipore Post, LiveWire, Spill Words and Lived Collective. Her poetry collection is called ‘A Leaf upon a Book’ (Leadstart Publishers, 2022). You can follow her work here. Her Instagram handle is anam.tariq_