Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
As not to be too obvious
he had a go at Glasgow
and the art of being Scottish.
On the wall he hung World
War black-and-whites:
silly little views of desert dunes,
greyed Moroccan blues and kohl-eyed prostitutes,
half-smiling, smoking keif, asking one another,
‘What brought el-afranji here, love or grief?’
In conversation he is a steam engine, a Lady of Lynn,
skipping into long dark tunnels,
disturbing the hearts of mountains,
furious with speed and smoke, then,
suddenly and without remorse,
all fury leaves him and you are drenched
in the warm and absolute silence of his clarity.
But before you could relax he slips, sideways,
too close to the edge of bright lagoons.
He curses the gods and loves them all.
Embarrasses you with his noisy sucking on an Arabian
Gulf shrimp in a Glaswegian restaurant, then cries out:
‘The bastards! What they charge for these.
A good man’s monthly wage. We used to scoop them up
by the bucket in Kuwait then sit
on the beach to ravish the damned things.
Your penis would wake you up and stay
the whole day hard as rock, that’s how good they were!’
He throws his head back and shouts his laughter.
The waiter looks at the floor when I stare at him,
burning with rage at how he looked at my friend,
the Prince of Egypt, the Coptic maniac,
my beautiful mad brother.
We walk out and the cold slaps us.
He refuses to put on his jacket.
Not sure of anything he plays my guide,
shows me the city as if it is not there.
Says nothing about the black stained stone buildings,
says nothing about the man pissing in the corner,
says nothing about his wife before he met her,
says nothing about their baby boy,
remembers only his mother,
the days before she died,
his siblings in California,
his father and the fat book he had given him,
‘with a photograph of the bastard Marx on the cover.’
He had rejoiced like a child when I arrived,
had none of the dampness airports cause in us all;
he was silent when I left,
looking, for the first time, like his father.
The fisherman’s stillness
is less about him
more about the fish.
The fisherman’s stillness
is less about him and the fish
more about the river.
The fisherman’s stillness
is less about him, the fish and the river,
more about the sky and trees and breath of time we all lie under.
I look at butterflies all day,
Skippers and Tiger Swallowtails,
Cleopatras, Adonis Blues and Blue Morpho:
the Madagascan Sunset moth.
All still. Un-flying.
Butter creatures.
And I prepare myself, every time,
in case they ask my name.
Hero.
The Giant.
The King. That is me.
Look. I have another roll,
this one is the entire zoo. See?
What more do you want?
What more?