# London

Last night. Dinner at Brick Lane, curry and fish. Tower Bridge all lit up, as S said, the bridge de la bridge. One could walk through this entire city in a night. Lovers stealing kisses everywhere on this mild Thursday night. Along Queen's walk, towards Tate Modern, and of course, one turns into the dome of St. Paul's, towards the Bank of England, and into the heart of England.

Last day. Woke up too late and dashed into the bookstores. Gower's Street, Waterstone's Academic at UCL. One could walk through this entire city in a day too. The British Museum, London Review of Books bookshop (of course). Friday lunch hour crowd, Ave Maria at Covent's Garden, beef pie, peas and chips, so that one could gallivant through Regent's Street, so that this air could be breathed for one more time, and so that one could squeeze into the tube with a luggage full of the last four months and onwards to Heathrow.

My last visit here was six years ago, and nothing much has changed. This city lives on a different time; time scale, time zone; and six years later, I'm the one six years older, a different I.

There's a beautiful poem by Anne Carson in the latest LRB, and the final stanza is just, utterly just, luminous:

. . . Raw | nothing I knew was of any use with you one day you clinged in the kitchen window poured raw rubies out on the table from a drawstring bag at your hip They look fake count on me to say the wrong no point comparing earthly, you could always pull out a girl a wound a shatter a bud to be nipped in the doom I wasn't half and when you left I sat at the table in my life. I sat at the table in my life . . .

I wanted to tell her, it was all because, very simply, she had stolen a kiss, and had to pay for it dearly with her life. 

And of course, she shouldn't have. 

Stole the kiss that is.