The imperial city toward which all roads tend,
Which codifies the laws and dispatches them
By runner or fax to expectant provinces
This is not. It’s an improvised mélange
Mushrooming along the banks of a tidal river,
Suffering the moods of its irrational weather
And a population with much to complain about.
Though you could dignify what draws you here
By calling it exile, your solitude is your choice,
Even when it racks you, even when
Your tendons stretch with what you have to carry.
Out you go tonight making the rounds, mapping
A route through the city’s drizzly melancholia,
Down streets of broad colonial emptiness.
Step inside a stained-glass door or two
Where shag and porter cloud the conversation.
Sip a slow pint in the company of strangers
While outside the rain slurs through globed lamp-glow.
The evening ages. A notebook fills with your
Idiosyncratic alphabet. Then the pubs close.
The pubs close, the streets rain-slick and desultory.
A cafeteria then—everybody’s
Hangout, where plain lives put in appearances
Over tea and a bun. The cash register whirrs,
The steamy rush of the coffee machine backgrounds
A clink of ironstone plates and stainless steel.
No sigh of leisure here—every life
In the room carries the imprint of having worked
The livelong day—not to boast or prove
A point, but simply because what else is there?
The way an old sufferer, grey hair wispy and thin,
Handles her knife, addressing a plate of fish,
Reaches you, touches some common chord.
Despite what they say about you—beyond your remoteness,
Your severe judgments on your fellow creatures—
You’ve some connection still to the human race.
Hypercritical, incommunicado,
It’s good to know deep down you’re one of us.