I rise to tears outside the plastic windows.
They aren't for me.
I lost mine at Heathrow, where your bags spun round and round into the plughole.
I float through the town on perfect shoes,
Past broken bottles, rabid dogs, and natives
Who stare with their dark eyes and dark skin like I shouldn’t be here this early
In the dark light, surveying the war dead from the collapse
Of this outreach spoke of Disneyland.
I walk along the beach.
The morning sand is clammy and full of regret, (dregs of) a one-night-stand.
The sun rises over someone else’s hills, the picture-postcard fishing boats
Catch the tiger’s eye winking off the sea,
Making an unlikely romance edged with broken glass.
Alone watching the sunrise, a young girl sits on the Taverna steps and braids her hair,
Like black water in the slanting sunlight.
A man is asleep on a shop floor, and the old woman picks around him, sighing,
And brushing leaves away from his face along with the glass into the landlocked streets. The tut-tut of her voice is shifted sideways to the tap of a blind boy’s cane.
The shops peter out as I run, and the girl sits on the steps of the Taverna,
Braiding her hair as the black water sluices the street and the narrow road shimmers into infinity
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem