Across all the miles that separate us,
More than twenty years away from your home,
You tell me of an unloved city,
The honeysuckle and the baffled men
Who look at you like tourists.
You should be here where the sky is postcard blue,
Where the morning is a soft withdrawal of the night
And not another day you just have to live through.
For a whole day I've sat here waiting for you.
I saw the gypsy come early with his flowers and go.
I saw the nuns, like dominoes, wooden and stiff,
Toiling up the hill as the church bell lisped.
I saw the lunchtime shoppers, arms full of fruit,
And tasted the sweetness of cherries on my tongue.
I sat on waiting in the siesta sodden sun,
The slow hours of the afternoon, lazy voices speaking,
In the square, a beggar bent over a sandwich,
Looking at it the way some of us look at books.
In the evening a straggling queue began to form
Outside the bright, peeling posters of the theatre,
And I imagined you there, excited and eager to go.
A bootblack walked across to me as the evening fell,
His fingers bent and the colour of raw walnuts.
He stretched like an athlete preparing for a race
And told me had news from a faraway place.
He didn't, of course, so I just bought him a beer
And let him talk with his drunk tongue stubbing the words.
At midnight, we were swept back out into the street
And we hugged and said goodbye like old friends.
I wrote this, Anna, because it's good to think that maybe
In another life, we might have passed by here together.