A Un Diplomat In A Hong Kong Jewelry Store Poem by Birgit Bunzel Linder

You look at the golden junk in the glass cage
and weigh the price there is to pay.
Your questions rush over my skin and leave
a breeze that shivers me
like conditioned summer air.
You mumble your accent into my ear,
about rights and equities,
securities and values.
Your faint touch charges through my blood,
like the spurts at Bride's Pool.
Your voice hovers in stories
about UNICEF and banks with gold,
like morning mists over Cove Hill.
Your inflection and your fluency
pitter-patter like water in a stony brook.
You talk about the good things you have done,
but I only grasp the clearness
of your convictions.
The straightness of your paths.
The confidence of a meritorious life
lived so far from mine.
How long until I wake
from my wide-eyed slumber?
You pick up a harbor of pearls.
Your teeth smile into a matching white.
We share scores of wars—
Normandy, Nürnberg, Nanjing.
I tremble and you nod,
and your gestures instills peace and security.
And yet I suddenly trip and fall
when you say, "Human rights
are relative." You pay for
the pearl harbor
in the jewelry store.
You walk out self-assured,
while I shiver in your breeze.