page 184

Barcelona

Citizens so love this city
they find it difficult to leave
even in sleep … much of which
takes place in mid-afternoon
so that the noise, scents, torpor,
and diesel-filled light
of these late 19th-century streets
enter not only their waking lives
but also their noon-day dreams:
some of which are about fish,
the harbour being full of them—
none healthy enough to eat
but all swimming blindly
in heart-rending spirals
with a sort of stunned
myopic grace. The beauty
of this ancient place
is everywhere and indisputable
from the melting spires of the Sagrada Familia
to the white gorilla with a spoilt child's face
caged in the Cuidedella park
and visited on holidays and Sundays
by families who pose like Renoir paintings
between rows of small but evenly placed
and delicately manicured
civic trees. One should also mention
the Gaudi fountain, rarely working,
and the ice-cream carts with their big brass lids
and the doves of course … Picasso loved them
as he did the fat geese on the cathedral pond
page 185 and the balconied whores in the Gothic Quarter
with their faces like African masks. The Art
Gallery, the one in the park, for the city
is full of them, is dated but devoted
to a local over-the-top Art Nouveau
that brings us—there's no escape—
back to Gaudi (much loved
by Franco for his religious fervour).
The man is everywhere, breaking plates,
bending stones, moulding metal.
The scent of his lavender-tinted drains
lingers miles out to sea. Dogs
plunge from the decks of passing yachts
and swim in packs to greet these gilded streets.

page 186

Drifter

for Anthony Hopkins
Between movies—a closed set, claustrophobic—
there's that looking up, long
intake of breath. It's
the open roads of America callings Does
the heart leap ahead? You bet. Beyond
the roles you invent or a stale sense of self
there's the scent of the desert after rain,
that glow behind Sunset Ridge. Perhaps
the ancestors ache to join in? those
tough Welsh miners in their coffined pits
sensing—through you—some hobo itch
that's more than another rush to the pub
or hunched Sunday stroll
through terraced streets. In
your favourite diner on Route 66
another grease-stained Rothko print
is pretending to be the sky. How
many more are stacked out there? Who's
shuffling that huge beyond? Load
up the Lexus, throw scripts to the wind,
you know that the unknown is always waiting
over the hill or round the next bend.

page 187

Song of the Nomad

Horizon-songs left on the wind
brush against bare skin.

There's a bristling back in the mind,
a loping that pushes joggers aside

as distance fills up the eye
with an Indian stare so old

it's almost stone. When we leave the road
heading into the hills
new paths unfold between each stride.

page 188

Voyages

Variation on a theme by Blaise Cendrars
Get a life—or several—
buy, sell, arrive, depart,
make a note of earth's scent …
the tang—or is it tug?—of live mud
lingering between the farewells.

Run to the ship's rails …
so many islands and whales.
The ocean's everywhere,
tons of it, immense,
with a hull that seems to be stuck in the waves
and the future flowing past.

What's next? What port's
but a day ahead
of our being there? What
welcoming stranger strolls down to the quay
wa iting for us to catch up?

I shall wear a white shirt
and dine on deck
my face to the setting sun. How
far we've come! How
—time and again—
we're blessed to be left on unknown shores
to leave our tracks in the sand.