The Transparent Ironist Replies To Rudyard Kipling, Esq.

The 'Indo-British' poet Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936), born in Bombay, was (arguably) a defender of British imperialism in India, and he coined the phrase 'The White Man's Burden'. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907, and is remembered, among other things, as the writer of The Ballad of East and West, the beginning lines of which are as follows :

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face,

tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Many years later in 2005, the Transparent Ironist, himself a thoroughly Anglicized native now living in the UK, makes the following riposte to Mr Kipling, Esq. :

Oh, East is West, and West is East, and the twain have already met

Their destinies now shaped by bloody encounters of love and hate

But there is still East and West, Nation, Race, and Gender

When two horizons meet under the placid blue skies

Their hidden frictions can still tear the world asunder!