Exile Sequence

1. Vision

and I wake again
at 4am

and from the back door
in a slip of light
I watch a black outline
against a neighbour¹s wall
marking the night

and later I dream
floating about the Florida islands
whose shining bridges
form one great Key

and the vision is a vast shape of water
coloured like neon cities
and the brightness,
which I had not remembered,
makes me, in my shape as air,
in my very being, a foreigner

2. America

Where were you going when you took up the stories
of all those lost people
and laughed across acres of fresh ploughed land
rolling, as a train through the desert Š
where were you going in that hot dust
your words burning the air
choking the breath of trees Š

Oh, I will always be here
where the smell of the wind become loss
and the turning of a simple leaf
the end of a lifetime.

And where you are now, how is it?
Do you still hear the tales from those who cannot
repeat your words, as I never could?
Am I silent as the sea, would I follow you Š

would I look beyond memories
because I have only these of you ­
strained toward the horizon,
covering the mountains Š

and I see you as I must see you,
sea and air, mountains and dust,
and the people who are your people
are not mine, not mine.

3. Displacement

Seventeen years, and you didn¹t go back,
not once ­
no, never

and not going back now
but backwards.

Is this a settling, as into old age
not longing, but boredom for my time
which was just too late?
Landscape?
Oh, yes, I miss the landscape Š
who would forget Great Salt Lake
or the Greyhound bus station at El Paso.

So many images, yes, and they haunt me Š
haunting as any puzzle or paradox
as any bus station at 2am

I didn¹t choose. The choice, however it was made,
came as thinly disguised as a sentence of an exile

when there is no native land.