peering out the car window/ to your face as you were walking,

peering out the car window
to your face as you were walking,
/the eastern seaboard of Sicily and
the cities of New England, my mother amongst
the railings of New York/ I fantasise
of Gotham City
/pulling into Syracuse,
rough walls and sunshine: so immersive, or
/your room in Catania, tangles by the ocean,
the latticed terraces of Syracusa’s rooftops
the island of Ortigia, in January
and the port is glistening
the chubby man and his son
bringing in their dhingy, ‘It feels like summer’ I thought
‘sunshine, mirror of memory,
in the soft new season, will they take me
to Salamina, Piraeus,
or through the mists, to Hackney,'
/Syracusa harbour was like Ramsgate when
we’d cruised down the Thames estuary, I often dream
of St Katherine’s dock, by Tower Bridge,
we moored there, I walked the docklands
I was ten and eleven
/she said in the tower block
on the Isle of Dogs, the girl had a thing
for the Marxist, Gramsci; went to Italy
visited his gravestone
/in the street market of Syracusa
tidbits chopped and lacerated
she looked up and was alike
a little
to the Korinthian princess in Pasolini’s *Medea*
/we sat at the harbour
on the steps, the lappings,
under the canopy of the banyan trees
or low arches of the harbour
/the Venetian-looking building, the poor,
we have no money, in the city we are left
with nothing, but outside of rent, in harbours,
we have time, to oil the keels, to imagine,