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It is perhaps difficult to conceive, but imagine that tonight on London bridge the Teddy boys of the East End will gather to sing Marlowe, Herrick, Shakespeare, and perhaps some lyrics of their own.

That, at any rate, is what happens at the Khaju bridge.

Boys and men go along the riverbank or to the alcoves in the top arcade.

Here in these little rooms -- or stages arched open to the sky and river -- they choose a few lines out of the hundreds they may know and sing them according to one of the modes into which Persian music is divided.

Each mode is believed to have a specific attribute -- one inducing pleasure, another generosity, another love, and so on, to include all of the emotions.

The singer simply matches the poem to a mode ; ;

for example, the mode of bravery to this anonymous folk poem: `` They brought me news that Spring is in the plains And Ahmad's blood the crimson tulip stains ; ;

Go, tell his aged mother that her son Fought with a thousand foes, and he was one ''.

Or the mode of love to this fragment by a recent poet: `` Know ye, fair folk who dwell on earth Or shall hereafter come to birth, That here, with dust upon his eyes, Iraj, the sweet-tongued singer, lies.

In this true lover's tomb interred A world of love lies sepulchred.

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