Adam O’Riordan
Teatralnaya
Thirty years late you make it there, on business,
a clenched fist raised under Marx’s granite face
below the statue a flash captures you mid-blink
remembering how you found the manifesto
one lonely winter at a London crammer. Earlier
you burned $90 on burgers and beers in the Marriott diner
on expenses with colleagues fresh in from Idaho.
For you a career was always more a retirement.
Though, as you passed the red sauce, I doubt you
let them know the weather outside brought to mind
the day you drove a boot full of pick-axe handles
across the Pennines to the striking miners
or the pistols still buried in the Portuguese foothills
by Mauricio who, in the winter of ’73, taught you to fire them.
a clenched fist raised under Marx’s granite face
below the statue a flash captures you mid-blink
remembering how you found the manifesto
one lonely winter at a London crammer. Earlier
you burned $90 on burgers and beers in the Marriott diner
on expenses with colleagues fresh in from Idaho.
For you a career was always more a retirement.
Though, as you passed the red sauce, I doubt you
let them know the weather outside brought to mind
the day you drove a boot full of pick-axe handles
across the Pennines to the striking miners
or the pistols still buried in the Portuguese foothills
by Mauricio who, in the winter of ’73, taught you to fire them.
Page(s) 54
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