The Displaced
A swarm of ghosts is like a bimbo eruption,
especially when they’re American,
for whom denial is heaven.
Who think they can reinvent
or deal themselves alive again;
would suck up to authority if they could find it,
and don’t so much haunt as annoy.
Accustomed to vast relocations,
they tend to trouble Old World places –
their native Formica and vinyl
are too resistant, life-affirming.
So that the native, perhaps deported,
who returns after years of rain
to a miraculously surviving room,
may find it full of these vulgarians ...
Striped wallpaper, Louis-something chair,
a view of the canal, and one
bare hour to be here,
making time with this girl. Who cries,
allows another bit of clothing
to be removed; cries again.
Why are you crying? I ask. –
My breasts are sunken, gone. –
No, no, they’re rich and full; see how
they overflow my hands. –
My womb was removed; there’s only
bone between my bony thighs. –
No, no: feel how you respond
to my infinitely tender touch.
She says her hair was shorn and used
somewhere – I caress it;
her voice is the wind over wire –
I stop it with a kiss,
and glance imperiously sideways, hoping
my countrymen will take the hint.
Whatever their initial class,
they claim a room like businessmen ...
One looks at his watch. Enraged,
frustrated, I find myself
beside the canal, on cobblestones.
A golden light secretes each wave and building.
At most I can believe she’s sleeping.
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