Faces

Older, slower, less tolerant,

I start this poem

in a here-and-now

place and time.

 

I flinch at any direct gaze

returned by the ancient

in the looking glass -

baggy-eyed and grey -

he reproaches me.

 

Slurp! Slap! Snap! Scrap!

Beer, birds, words, herds.

Joining in is fitting in.

Joining up is giving up.

 

24-hour party propagandists,

improving the City of the Bear’s

reputation for decadence:

I drink all night

and sometimes the next day.

 

Wake up in East Anglia,

fall into bed East of Suez,

feeling I’m East of Eden,

reading lines from East Coker.

 

The boredom, the not-quite-fighting a war-dom,

the medals, the battlefields flown over,

the drawn-out defeats, never called retreats,

the hotels replaced by tents in deserts,

suddenly I am Omar Khayyam.

 

In Spain, I am someone else again,

Professor Longhair, the Scottish teacher,

walking from class to class

on the shady side of the street.

 

Here is my home,

it is where I am.

All the other places, fit the faces

I wore to fit in them.

We are our own home.

 

I can almost see that handsome boy

behind the hall-of-mirror-image

grotesque, staring out at me.

He winks, I don’t wink back.