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Poem for Marie

In a bevy of rooms eloquent
with ivy, we harvested
all the blonde of summer. Drinking.
On each table was a bust of apples
and bananas in the form
of fingers softening
around prayer, and the hours
fell grey as moths between
the low shoulders of our voices. How
often she would come in from the kitchen
to serve up her former Helsinki
time and again, fill my glass
with ice and wine, her hand
the colour of crushed sage; teeth
sleighting slips of spit
intricate as lace through her English.

Marie. Her real name dropped
like blighted fruit upon entry
two decades ago, a violet
nightgown domed around her knees, breasts too
ample ever to be beautiful in this
country, and in her lap a havoc of spices.
Eyes clear as the raw
blue smell of snow, she pared the filters
off cigarettes with a bread knife, repeating
I was a fool to come, though
I knew she'd go to the corner
pub, later. A fresh beige applied
to that tiny fire of winter
smouldering under her face's crust -
like a light bulb switched on
above the kitchen sink, its chill pooled
long after dark
in the yellow open hearts of lettuce.

Somewhere near the Rhine, or anywhere...

This place where, for some, the world begins

and women reach to smell the ghosts
of their men in bars
busy with the kissing of hands;
this place where the faces
of passengers swirl, gentle as fish, on the river
that escapes like a train, slashing
the heart of Europe west
of the last bisons on the Russian-
Polish border, their grasslands
turned sheaf in a jar of vodka
emptied on the way here
and rolling sleep between the aisles

below conductors' voices flexed
like muscles around the consonants
of villages where the young slam
drunk into trees thinking
the straight line of their lives. This
is the place where, on both sides,
machinery meshed in sound
bilks biology by sprouting
concrete - giants dazzled
by their own height. Where some worker
waits now for beer
or his next-door neighbour,
a blonde whose face is a coin
peeling at the edge
as if restless with the warmth of his palms.

There we might meet. On
a platform trembling with rain. Our
possessions thin as magic
in our wallets. A handful of hope
stitched onto plastic, and,
if we're lucky, a ticket
to another place which, days
later, will prove
to be no better.