Rainbow Aisle (Song) Poem by Frank Bana

Way up on the rainbow aisle
Where the many colours sing and the children smile
I saw you cast a silver net
Onto the wet seabed with the winterfog overhead

There are silkworms black and white
On the concrete floors and the fields of night
Caught between the truckwheels and the hoe
And the sound of Weather Report on the underground radio

And I was crawling up to you, just like that
Between the crumbling cliff and the ledge where you sat
And where was the greater danger
In the moment when you turned around and called me a stranger?

In the concert halls I felt alone –
Jacques Brel and Charlie Chaplin gone on home
And that’s where you’re joking about now
Where you’re half-gone, anyhow

And I talk to the winter children
Getting no mothers or machines to feed them
And I’m dreaming in a language I can’t speak
While the streets of Europe fill up with autumn leaves –
And bookshops on the cheap.