³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

My sadness is the measure of your beauty,
but there is no such beauty in my sadness...

Having written this I was sitting in a chair,
and when she herself came in I wanted to stand up quickly,
but somehow I had grown a bit old,
somehow I had become lazy, thinking of the finale,
and I stayed put, a novel in my lap
and a kitchen knife on top of it.
The corn on the cob was boiling in the basement kitchen.
All this, without stirring, not refusing
this old game entirely, nor praising to the skies,
but hurting a little inside:
this had vanished, as though I shall return to reality
without all this, or in exchange I must strike this out.

My sadness is the measure of your beauty,
but there is none of this beauty in my sadness...

This poem was written in Beaumont House, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service's hostel - my first home in London, when I came to join the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in May, 1994.

On 5 November this year Beaumont House was closed down, since the lease has expired.

A statement about the closure says: "To many World Service overseas recruits, it will have been their initial 'home' in the UK and one of their first tastes of British, not to mention the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, culture" and it's fully true.

I still remember kind English ladies Carol and Wendy, who met and welcomed me just as I expected. They reminded me of the books of Dickens and Galsworthy.

There was a strict and gentlemanly receptionist in a uniform - I bet he was a former officer with a rich and adventurous overseas past.

A Caribbean ma'am in the canteen used to ask each of us: 'How are things with you, da'lin?' Once one of us answered her: 'Could've been better', to which she immediately replied with a gracious wisdom: 'But mind you, it could've been worse, too'.

While I was watching ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ television - I once hears someone say "I never thought that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ broadcast to Britain too!" - in Beaumont House at Princess Square, Bayswater, I met a tall man with sad eyes and long hippyish hair.

"Are you a poet of of the beat generation? Something like Kerouac or Ginsberg?" I asked him.

"No, rather gin and tonic" he replied and introduced himself: "Nodar Jinn, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Russian of Georgian appellation".

Later he became an iconic Russian writer, who published one of the best novels about Stalin and then died of heart attack when he ws at the top of his career.

One day I'll write about him. He was one of many in the chain of World Service writers (Naipaul might've seen Orwell, Markov might've seen Naipaul, Jinn might've seen Markov). Of all of them, he was the one whom I met and became friends with.

I have sweet and sour memories of Beaumont... Indeed my sadness is the only measure to beauty of it, but as I said once inside of it: there is none of this beauty in my sadness.

Farewell, Beaumont House.