Page 33 - Poems

Line 7:

HOMISTAN

I’m home, I claim, and the relief at the other
end (deep-toned as the grateful glance they’d have lavished
on him, god of safe arrivals and good weather,
Ganesha, the elephant-headed) does banish
remorse at this ash-coloured untruth. Home remains
a long way from Orly, but it’s late already
in parental climes, and my kin would surely abstain
from sleep till cradled in this mantra to steady
most misgivings. We transit, rucksack and I, from
Terminal Sud to Villejuif/Line Seven on Bus
Two-Eight-Five, both perched above a double bass, some
strolleys (pink, lime, teal) and a brown army trunk, trussed
like a mummy, with a spitting feline (in grey-
white plastic carrier, smug and new) for wordplay.

At Villejuif-Louis Aragon, we shamble
underground together with trunk, tabby,
two of them totes (both pink) and their owners, to land
in the striped green-white belly of the train, soporific,
near-packed already — and, half-hidden in the shades,
something like the sated sea serpent of childhood
dreams, when seen from a landing overhead.
We are all, it seems, just as somnolent, or dense
(is it the day, the hour or the weather?):
I beg pardon to a giant orange
double stroller jostled aside by my rucksack,
then falter to see it laden with crockery –
tea pot and cups, milk and cream bowls, saucers,
straight from Quimper? – and totally bereft of kids.

Departure is delayed, imparts a male
voice spin-dried to dispel all sediments
of warmth or vexation, due to a glitch
in the signal box. Pause, and, purely technical,
as problems go, this one will be solved rapidly.
A carol of collective breath rings through
the carriage — faulty signals, then, not dubious,
knobbly cartons, nor disturbed arsonists, conveys
our lightened exhalation. Home is where they know

33