Patricia de Mayo
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Picture
Exile 1

 Two plastic palm trees

 one dead, lying on the ground

 No wonder, these palm trees

 gave up their shadows 
 
to electric lights

'Remember what you used to be,

 Look at us! 

 and don’t forget what you are 
 now’,

 they try to whisper, but of course

 there is no breeze


 
This is a party and everyone is here

Bathed in the pale light, 

of this foreign summer 

This is an island

where bright gowns billow

temporarily

among rows of temporary chairs

And temporary music

laps at people’s feet


Suddenly, a line of dancers 

appears from nowhere

a reluctant centipede

shuffles slowly, left leg, right leg

This is a party after all

Then they are gone


There is food somewhere

in the building

Maybe this is where they are.

A day of culture after all

the men in festive black

The women put their hair up


They have escaped their murderous home

but they don’t dare 

to escape their grief.

                                                            

********

Exile 2

They asked you to talk

About the ‘situation’

 In an empty room

A seasoned refugee they say

Who knows empty rooms

They hope you will fill it with  meaning

This room from which they wish to sell their grief

To the whole wide world

Injustice in colour is expensive

But worth more while you are there


I saw you’ve not yet learnt 

The language of forgetting

Ah, there is still hope

When you used to sing your words

Stately shapes of sound, Pythagoras knows

They proceeded with care
 
And with an eye for truth

Today I saw them fall 

Brittle like glass they fell

And shattered on the ground


Your song of grief

could not be heard

In the hollow
 
resonance

Of this empty room.



********


Exile 2a


And there you were

skimming the surface of big city life

or so you thought

Half man, half dragonfly you flew

unsuspecting of the murky depth's

hidden schemes  and untold calculations


Even Pythagoras does not know

the truth of these equations

determined as they often are

by laws obscured to those

who made them

who most times

have no wish to understand

what they are trying to forget


Well love, no wonder a strange chemistry

took hold of you

and left you bruised and dizzy

and aching with uncertainties

Are you learning

the language of forgetting?




            
                      *********


Exile 3

 All that knowledge

 on the tenth floor 

 of a towerblock tenement

 taking refuge in your open mind

 All knowledge is good up here

 in this small room 
 
 that memory stretches into the horizon


 As another skyscraper rises up

 (a scraper of the sky

 puncturing the clouds

 with its jagged tip

 another thousand songs find their voice

 high above the concrete

 A gift to the wind 

 who carries them wherever it  pleases

 Such generosity is rare these days


 You can watch the sunset up here

 through each square of a wire mesh 
 
 The same sun

 that sets above your homeland

 How much wire mesh 

 how many suns 

 and how many songs

 will it take

 until .......


  

 


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