Memories And Dirty Knees Poem by Frank Bana

A straight-backed bike
Bone-shaker, with a broken chain
Sunday p.m. at the Rabbi's home
For Hebrew hour, just down the lane
Buried deep under the twisting vowels
Waiting quite patiently to see
The Monkees singing on TV

Loud boys invade the bus from school
After class with 'Fish' and 'Ning'
Rugby games, warm winter showers
Wearing short pants and dirty knees
Latin midweek, on Saturdays
Futile dallying with Greek

England from her goddesses estranged
Rude, she begs to be refined
I study her peculiar ways, as if
Infatuated by a witch
Who draws strong circles, cleans the spring
Carves wood to make her sticks and broom
With all her boys confined in thrall
And to a clammy reading room

He thought I'd be a diplomat, the Head
And he was right, that was to come
But now, merciless tickling
Over a Master's knee, and in
Some circumstances more extreme
A cricket bat across the bum

He must have kept high hopes for me
But little did he know of lands
For which I would turn traitor, of
The soil I was to hold and tread
But all through time, England remains
I wonder, would she take me back
And have me for herself again?

She dances with her sadness in the sky
I watch, holding my leaves of literature
The Isis Morning smiling in the dawn
At me and my examination gown
After May Ball, her memories, a look
To bring me consolation, as exile
Holds me within its ever-stubborn hands,
The pages of a foreign-language book.