After Beirut//Paris/etc, from Sicily

The van bumped slowly,
before me     in the headlights
walked a woman     in a raincoat,

I like living
in colonnaded
or high-ceilinged places,
where sunlight sleeps in caves/ paint-peeling
cities that are not often
invaded,

leaving a beautiful life
would be the hardest/

(I passed through Montmartre in the summer,
the leaves were already falling)

I strolled through Piazza Armerina,
smiling at the rich scenes      and night
and sweet and pregnant
street corners

it felt that life was like
those boys in Pasolini’s
<<Mamma Roma>>, jogging round the estate
to see something
lovely      that would soon
not be there,

“He was my uncle,” I said/

I could see the children in the cars
speaking,      I could not hear them/

but it’s probably the hardest
for those that remain      like at the end
of Mamma Roma, when they whom we love
have gone      but we were not there to see it/
and the ones that flock around
to comfort you/ are fellow workers you
tolerate or happen to
know as acquaintances, not even
a family resemblance or
strangers

-/-/-/-/-/-/

she took me to a wine bar/ she was sweet and
like a mother
/Manuela served me whiskey/ asked “Is he staying here?”
Manuela it would be so nice
to hear you say “December”
/my fingers smelt of basil,
/the road to the farm we’d paved
into a wild mosaic
/un’altra cosa
whiskey is like other people’s amazement
surprising your blood, like sweat or
under the stars with no jacket/ headlights
plunge into such a deep hallway
on the plateaus/ of these hills made of branches

I couldn’t help it, she was Parisian

I couldn’t help it, she was Parisian

and leaned her head back when she smiled, which was

teasing/ and magnificent,

I passed through Montmartre this summer, in fact.

The leaves were already falling.

Why am I writing

in this predictable English metre?

Probably all the Yeats

in the A-Level class at Stoke Newington

with the student Polydorou. What a name, ’many gifts’ in Greek,

straight out of the Iliad;

I took some students in Piazza Armerina

cherubim for explorational play

and adults for conversation,

enough to pay for diesel, tolls and ferry boats

to Greece, and back perhaps

to that closed-up room

of a sickly Edwardian child,

the oiled-wood hall

on the dripping wet rock

green with sea-moss

that they call England.