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Ken Head

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Wherever you are

you’ll open uneasy eyes that first morning
to a new kind of sunlight, a foreign language
of street noises, with the knowledge dawning

on you that the coffee’s bound to taste wrong
and the view from your window won’t fit
the bag of images you’ve brought along.

Like a set of new clothes cut just right
for a stranger, the fabric of hours you’ll have
to wear that day will seem a bit too tight

to be comfortable. Not that your style,
however much you think it must do, will
look so bad it’ll make people stop and smile,

because down there on the busy street,
at the centre of the ebb and flow of things,
where your past and unmapped future meet,

you’ll find, even if it makes yours senses jar
for a while, the overlay of old, familiar
memories that’ve made you what you are.

What is a strange city, anyway, but space
rearranged, a new collage of old fragments,
home moved on to a different place?

Page(s) 25

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