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John Halladay

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Strabo returns from Smyrna

He should be grateful he wasn’t left
in that pagan pot that he made for himself
yet he’s sneaked back and already moaning:
how things have changed for the worse
and how the ones who’re in charge
should be the ones who are taken in charge, etc.
Seems he didn’t learn much.
Freedom’s on his mind.
If I had patience or inclination
I’d tell him that topic’s an old one.
It’s not clever to be out of fashion.
He doesn’t notice,
more things have changed than he realises.
The body politic is of one mind,
more importantly it is of one voice.
He says, he has experience
with a different culture.
We nod uncomfortably, our eyes on the door.
He says, we could improve our minds,
that we should be receptive to ideas.
We hem and huff and remind him
there are other things we ought to be doing.
He can’t see why we flap our arms and hiss.
He says, he has a right to speak his mind.
So he does.
In return we have the right to kill him.

John Halladay lives in the south of England. His first collection, Letters From Ravensbruck, was published in 2003 by the University of Sheffield Press.

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