Paul Cameron Brown

“ Mangroves How do you survive in the mangrove swamps-- amid the twitchings of foetid water & lice thick as baby tears? How, with all the wallow of thick muck making suction noises and the teams in relays searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free? Your bamboo pole knows every ploy but a slender craft ill-equipped to sparring blows from every quarter the undergrowth necessitates. ”

“ Desire Sleep is a striking woman accosted by various men while in a dance; the warring desires thus present themselves as on a battlefield-- hunger comes arrayed with red plumes to befit his appetites, sensuality somewhat decked out as a dandy in a mauve waistcoat and, of course, there is Fear, the most thwarted of the suitors, bejewelled with a flashing sabre, rattling it from the tail of his skinny stick horse, the pale charger riding to intercept the beautiful courtesan Sleep bestowing her favours illicitly wherein she would but choose. ”

“ Regalia If the rich are different they show it with the clarity of their table as Fitzgerald decried, the breathless hush of their garden regalias, the manner in which wedgewood crystal are cleaned to a polished exactness-- the shimmer of expensive china no less repetitive than the hulking boys waiting in window stops, monsoon rain pelting the upper Punjab plains. ”