Be the autumn of my days.

I am done

with summers gone

and springs to come

or other rains.

I'm the only

season that remains.

While it lasts,

walk with me up a tree-lined past

where falling leaves garland the dusk

and smell of me and change.

Please, but please,

hold me in your sway.

Asad Latif is an editorial writer for The Straits Times, Singapore. He read History for his Master of Letters degree at Cambridge, where he was a Chevening Scholar. He was a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Centre, Honolulu, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard. Among his books is Celebrating Europe: An Asian Journey (Singapore, 2012).