THREE
VISITS
‘When speaking,
writing or thinking in English the word Home always means for me the hospitable shores of
Great Britain.’
- Conrad N. Korzeniowski, 13th October 1885,
Singapore
for
Peter and Andrew
- Peter Robinson (U.K.)
1
ON DYNEVOR ROAD
Grey miles of plain-looking streets are home
for two girls laughing on the 73
or child at a till in your Turkish deli.
She picks correct change from my open palm.
They’re home for the drinkers passing their
time
in the Daniel Defoe or Vortex Café,
for an out-of-work actor who fills his day
writing a memoir, me doing the same …
or the next best thing, they’re the place to
be
surviving a brain-tumour relapse
when hours would pass wondering if perhaps
I could make it back over cloudscapes and
sea,
be pronounced fit enough to set off towards
pine groves, bamboo leaves, the Japanese
words …
2
ON DEFOE ROAD
Our jet-lagged babies asleep on the floor,
this was where we would come to hide
from overseas, as had Conrad before.
Remembering when I nearly died,
gratefully we would catch those signs
of Robinson and Friday in the street,
pretty rooms, privets, the clothes lines
welcoming us to an exile’s retreat,
my fallen face, my wounded head …
and though our last waking here tends
to sadness now we’ve left the bed
pristine, inspired, each understands
parting and bidding adieu, as you said,
it isn’t that the friendship ends.
3
VELUX AUBADE
One final waking in your attic room
finds sheets rumpled at a Velux skylight
(its name from lux-lucis, I
assume)
conjuring behind the rooflines opposite
a glow as if from some famous aubade
for lovers who would have to leave
their safe house, a homely abode,
because you are about to move.
Slanting a promise through the usual cloud
like a bonus payment in kind,
daylight sends us out on Lavers Road
between properties and, to my mind,
this last brightness in its flood
accumulates all of our stays combined.
****