Serbia

It is June and I am moving again.
I have forgiven the broom its shortcomings
and allowed it to foul its old whiskers.
I have pardoned the own-brand sponges
which themselves permit the bathroom tiles to come
clean, drying out whiter and whiter
with each sweep. Now, with the furniture
pushed to the wings and calmly awaiting
their cues, I will exorcise the memory
of this place as I have those places
no respectable atlas still recognises.

It is June and I am eulogising
a country I never knew and owes me
nothing. And without any warning
but this one, my grandmother, herself
homeless, sweeps her way from one June
to another with all the lightness, the delight
in motion only moths and arrow-like
lapwings can know. Without stopping, she takes
my hand in her firm hand, and when she opens
her mouth to speak it is the sound
of water running from one place to another.

Netherlands

After forging both our signatures - Mrs and Mr
on the hostel register, the hostel somewhere

between limbo and hell, but all we could muster
with sunrise already red-spattering the air -

we rose as if in worship of each other,
intoning in the tongue of lovers or lovers'

image, and if we already shared a language
pre-existing and only to be gouged

from us as from a stone, then her mouth
was a wellspring where air met earth,

and on her tongue that was every river,
or black-reflecting puddle we had earlier

tripped over, was every drop of sweat
or condensation from every dancer and bar-light,

and in the light of a new year we were hesitant to face,
her dim eyes, her Indias of spice

glanced down at the feet that were never my feet,
then the eyes that were only mine, and yet -

even as the doors of our twin cells closed
and sky paled to eye-blue above the clothes

we had discarded - I settled down in my casing
and simmered to the accent I still have trouble placing.

Greece

I found him on the beach, half-starved on his driftwood
raft, barely able to form the sound of his own name.
Once he could, I heard his story, broke bread for him,
hardly gave him credence, led him to the palace
nonetheless. Nausicaa came later. But the day
I recovered overnamed Odysseus, naked
but for a leafy loincloth and flotsammed beard,
became the night I met you. Everyone we knew
crammed in a sandy cove, the bonfire's drowsy light,
the big man's susurrent tone, lulled me to agony.
I was ready to grab a bottle and vamoose

when I caught your steady, uninterested gaze
and the universal two-finger sign for 'smoke?'
You asked who he thought he was, whether his story
were fiction or recollection, his or someone elses,
what difference it made? And answer were overlong,
but mine was studied, earnest, and as far beyond
my recall as your pine-green shawl, your eyes pine-green,
even his raven-ish beard and his hands tucked behind
himself like a raven, weren't. These fragments coalesced
one night in dream as a sensuous whole. As for all
that happened next, you remember as well as I.

Côte d'Ivoire

As if there were nowhere in the world
but the ten-or-so yards before his back line,
Kolo Touré might yet hold his position
(kitted out in orange and still more orange)
somewhat better than another Ture,
Samori, who, in circa eighteen ninety,
saw his French-styled legions driven
by French legions east and further east,
his turf not so abandoned as removed
from the place between two European stones
that had once been his own back line.

As if the whole story could add up
to more than a matter of lines,
as if a field of battle could become
little more than a field of play
marked by bunkers and fox-holes
that might once have been called home,
as if this scorched and salted dirt
might yet show signs of blooming,
Kolo, in a white-and-green change
kit, fills the hollow in his defence
as if he might yet hold his position.

Slovakia

I followed the echoing voices and found the place
four teenagers, three boys and a girl, were skateboarding
in the august courtyard outside a bank, or an office-
block, the glass was too dark to tell. One skater fell
on his ass. Adam had taken our cash to look for food,
he’d return minutes later with salami and bread, cheese-
flavoured crisps, a cold fizzing bottle; I’d found a spot to sit.
I’m good at that. My cards didn’t work on the continent,
he doled out absurd IOUs, actual pocket money.
The kids hunkered in a bunch as one by one
they rumbled toward a staircase and by magic kicked

into silence, briefly, before the board skited off
on its lonely trajectory. Before recovering it
from the decorative bushes, hung low as if ready to ripen,
he shared a solemn high-five that cracked round the square,
holding on for a moment after the strike. I couldn’t read
his eyes. I couldn’t focus on the map I was pretending
to read. Then Adam returned with salami and bread
and I stung his hand with my own, he asked what for,
I almost said I loved him. We sat and ate,
a boy pushed off across the marble slates
and launched himself beyond what was under his control.