Remember when we went to see St. Martin’s Lane?
We huddled in Charles Laughton’s room
just as I huddled there with you,
shivering. Popcorn for dinner. Breath like fog.
We followed Charles out to the London streets
without ever stirring from our seats.
We could have worked an act up for busking,
I might have even kissed you for the asking.
You were so still, sitting next to me,
covered by the flickering reflections
of the inhuman mechanical projections
of the original camera’s inspections.
The darkened rain, the poverty of gloom,
were only ours, stuck in a little room.
But when the film ends, and we leave our seats,
it’s pouring outside, and the whole film repeats.
(I too have often followed Sylvia Sidney
to a small diner for some beans and kidney.)
These fantasies are real. Our life is real.
Our quiverings half-concealing what we feel.
Our waverings aligned with electricity and steel.
Who do we thank for bringing things to order?
Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, Alexander Korda.
When the film’s over, we have grown up too fast,
like Barbara Stanwyck’s daughter in Stella Dallas.

From the forthcoming volume Tales of the Buckman Tavern (Mumbai: Poetrywala, 2012).