Wednesday nights at The Old Jazz
Wednesday nights at The Old Jazz,
earnest young expatriates
loosening under the influence
of small Dutch beer and peanuts –
pindas! – the broken cases
littering the table like
chrysalises freshly shed.
How provincial England seemed,
mired in Maggie's furious
dismantling of society –
there was, I swear, then some such thing –
and, from this newly privileged
position, rough and quaint.
The Gypsy Kings on repeat.
Here on this comfortable bridgehead
I lay, imagining sorties
into the friendly interior.
What possibilities of flight, what
excursions into high culture
and the Teutoberg Forest
were not prefigured here
in Dante's tongue?
volare
oh oh
cantare
oh oh oh oh
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