GILAD’S CITIES by Bryan Thomas
G: This poem by Bryan Thomas made me very proud. Beauty is the weapon and we fight for truth, peace and justic.
GILAD’S CITIES
PARIS. Accordion,
essentially Parisian,
echoed by the clarinet.
Here love is true,
is soulful and the depth of it is fearful
not because of things unknown to come
but because its felt so deep.
TELAVIV, never been, but Africa, the North
blew loud and clear, those
phrases, musical, ring true.
This is a ‘foreign’ land,
where people love and hate,
are passionate; their boundaries,
in all senses of the word, are marked,
unlike our favoured compromise.
MOSCOW, more the Volga boatmen
than Red Square,
just like those Russian jokes
about the funny side of life
which we still find bizarre.
SCARBOROUGH. Oh, Scarborough Fair
parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
that haunting theme,
the saxophone evokes so well.
A break from melancholia
takes us to the Fair we had forgot
until the phrase returns
and we are lost in thrall.
BERLIN! Heil! Jawhol?
No, not a bit of it.
The Empire has returned,
waltzing in, to leave the audience,
off key and counting three
before the break.
Bryan Thomas
19.02.13
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