The glory of pedalling the wrong
way on a one-way street,
for now the order of the world is
this: black will be white
and monarchs road-sweepers.

Taking corners like the Manx TT,
knees grazing the pavement,      
we breeze through red
that might as well be green,
past cars in a smoky veil.

A policeman’s on his beat as I
wheel by market porters
with their blood-smeared aprons
on this hillock, once a gallows –
here Wat Tyler harangued the king.

The moon glimpsed in a wedge of sky,
I whirl down Pudding Lane,
the FT Index up, it’s 12.04, 18 degrees –
so what, I’m an angel fish
in a school of rainbow stripes.

You board the Métro at Jacques Bonsergent – line 5
then surface at the terminus, strike out
across the eerie bus station, hop on
a slim blue tram for Seine-Saint-Denis.

Tower blocks crowd a cloudless August sky,
relieved by just one tree, and you are squashed
with people from all parts, their weighty bags,
are told: ‘Alight one stop past Libération.’

It rises like a crest in wavy concrete
from the flagstones, half-submerged, a ship of state.
Above, two men survey a sea of pavement,
spread their cardboard beds, bask in the sun.

The entrance is a secret down a slipway –
you step through wide glass doors, are welcome here.
Curved walls invite you along sinuous corridors
that have no edges, seem to have no end,

open on meeting-rooms starry with lights,
low-ceilinged, confidential, where a lie
would wash up naked and a pose be punctured
by guffaws. Here talk is comradely, forthright.

A scalloped theatre greets you, unsuspected,
flowing blue and yellow walls, ocean and beach,
plush proletarian seats – Niemeyer’s swirling claim
the poor Paris banlieue could be Copacabana.

With an armful of baguettes too hot to hold
I trailed behind the patron through Les Halles –
green wrought-iron canopies, outside still dark.
He probed some fruit, arrayed and plentiful

then we made for the hotel: a metal vat
of steaming coffee grounds and chicory
that I ladled into bowls, served guests
who wandered down in dribs and drabs,

materialised from crannies, came in seasick
off the rickety staircase to pain croustillant,
hushed conversations, while the English night porter,
moustachioed, stopped reading Fanny Hill

and took the Métro home. ‘You really need
a uniform,’ the patron mused. In cold mid-morning
we set out again to Prisunic, his thin grey hair
slicked back: he was wizened, small,

dreamt of a box at L’Opéra, of cent mille balles.
He rummaged for a charcoal polyester smock
that buttoned at the shoulder – more dentist than garçon –
said that would befit Le Grand Hôtel du Globe.

In the makeshift lounge squeezed on the mezzanine
and bathed by orange light I swapped thoughts
with two postgrads from the USA who had a baby,
discovered visions shared could span the ocean.

Impromptu soirées fired those gathered there –
spellbound by fellowship we spoke of what could be,
breathed air still busy with revolt, ideas cascading
down the stairwell, talk brimful of possibility,

our anthems on the turntable, new 45s:
Nicole Croisille, Aufray and Polnareff –
the tunes that sent our spirits soaring
and belied the grave, dour admonitions of De Gaulle.

Banter in the white-tiled kitchen, a rosbif
with Jean in his tall chef’s hat, half a finger severed,
broad vowels of Le Midi, with Ali the wry plongeur
and Jacqueline the waitress, lovestruck in another part of town;

Philippe the commis chef riding in on his Solex
with winklepickers and a quiff, telling me
of home in Alsace, where later I’d visit him,
turn up a rusted helmet on the hillside near Verdun;

chance midnight rendezvous with fashion students
from London – I chatted to a chic, slim girl,
beguiled by long blond hair. Vin rouge stained our smiles,
but any more I was too awed to dare.

Striking out over the cobbles of Pont-Neuf,
tripping up by a red-lit dive in steep Pigalle,
catching my second matinee of the new Buñuel
while workers marched on streets shiny with rain...

Between the Louvre and plate glass of Palais Royal
a story opened at a run-down hostelry
tucked in a backwater, Le Grand Hôtel du Globe –
dingy, compelling, where a rebel cowed leapt free.

I walked through keyhole arches: cream, vermilion
and to my left more trees of stone were rising –
if there was one there may have been a million.

A forest of pillars on my right was hiding
more exquisite arches: vermilion, cream,
carved foliage on their capitals and gliding

skywards like some never-ending dream
or image of forever, harmonious
peace of Moors, Christians and Sephardim –

al-Andalus’s people: no erroneous
hates or bigotry, or reason of the sword
but an enlightened moment, glorious

and predicated on the open word,
informed by Arab grammar, geometry –
not a war hero but learning was their lord.

In the Alhambra’s shallow pool you could see
an image of the cupola so high
and plunge through reflections into infinity.

This poise and equilibrium bathed in time
was smashed by the iron-spiked inquisitor
who’d countenance no other, vilify

the Jewess with ‘Ave María’ above her door,
Abdul who’d thought to change his name to Juan,
garrotte them, or banish them to foreign shores.

Among the chiselled fronds I had begun
to hear the muezzin’s wail, the caliph’s prayer –
or was it the gypsy singer sick with love,

staunch as a Roman buttress on the Guadalquivir
and fording the river on its well set course
with plangent cries for her no longer here

where farmers, shepherds too harnessed the force
of passing currents, made their order?
Listen! The clop of the hooves of Lorca’s horse
through the cobbled alleys of Córdoba.

Oradour-sur-Glane, 10th June, 1944

They reach out into the present –
naked chimneys, vacant doors,
the writhing iron where Jean-Baptiste
swung his hammer in the forge,
         
a rusted car with crumpled headlights,
the seized up sewing-machine
in the draper’s shop where Édith Leblanc
once quietly stitched a seam.

Never a pastis will be served
on green baize at L’Estaminet.
No hand on the cycle handlebars.
A tram line to who knows where?
         
Melted frieze of the church bell
with a tongue that couldn’t toll.
Glasses from a vanished face.
Not a pen in the school inkwells.

Six hundred and forty-two people
flung into a heap.
Then the S.S. plundered the cellar
of the wine merchant, Jacques Denis,

got drunk on the finest vintages
and set the village ablaze,
the whispers of the rooftops,
a baby not yet named.

Night was black in Puerto Montt.
Votes in the plebiscite had been counted –
the dictator’s camp had won.
‘What can I do?’ The editor waved his arms,
picked out bold type for ‘Yes to Pinochet’
as cars hooted ‘I told you so’ around the streets.

For three days I was a guest at a pensión
run by a couple with a young child.
I walked by lakes, snow-capped volcanoes
where grass at least knew nothing of authority.
We got on well and warmed to one another,
but this was a time of ‘general fear’.

On the third evening the man took down
a photo from the sideboard, showed me the family,
then slipped it from its frame. Behind
was a worn black and white snap
that he held up, smiling – like a locket,
silver buried in the garden.

‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. 
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.’
Dom Helder Câmara


Here in the cathedral at Olinda
though your voice is gone
a breeze ruffles fresh flowers,
the church bell tolls,
a single bird in flight
carries your credo
out through palm trees
over the turquoise sea,
the sole, heretical truth –
I’ve seen the beggars
and the glue-sniffing boys –
that food and shelter
are for all to share,
a baby’s cry is
holier than angels.