The Grey Danube

In Budapest we naturally
stayed in the former Soviet
Officer’s club:
a sumptuous dive
on the Buda side -the
best on offer for uniforms-
which didn’t mean a sink
with a plug, only stains.

Just 3 short years
after the wall came
hurtling down and
no-one spoke a word
of Russian learned and
earned under the bear’s paw.
The pearl of the Danube
was gritty with builders' sand.

How could Irish bars
appear so quickly? The
Shamrock now as ubiquitous
as the golden arches.
The street girls, impossibly
glamorous in their knock-
off clothes, cocking eyebrows
at the greedily gullible.

In the backstreets,
a help-yourself bar
with one dish on the menu:
some poster-boys
for heroic art with Uncle
Joe’s moustaches
argued about football
when the only Hungarian
I knew was Puskas.