Refugee trying to fasten
A red rose to the windscreen.

Grown in a greenhouse
It's not quite the colour of blood.

Enormous hidden populations
City afloat on some sort of raft

But safe in here in here we're doing the language dance,
It's English as a Second Language

And that means I am in here
Teaching the words to do their best to find you.

When the time comes
To fix these words in your mouth

There is that space between us
And the language is like the news

Just before it reaches you.
It waits in the air, weighs down your bag –

This evening, walking down
A street whose rubbish blows towards us

Why should it resemble
The wasted landscape of a dream?

'In Turkey' you had told me
'History is difficult.

We have to learn the Sultans
Whose names all sound the same'.

You talked about Hikmet and you showed me
A greyish photograph, your father

Some sort of Party gathering years ago
Somewhere near a lake and I had thought

The most of politics might be
An intelligent refusal

Watching your tower block subside
Into an effusive sunset.

Copyright © John Welch, 2003.