Richard Burns

The confines between Ukraine and Slovakia will not contain her,
And the customs officials between Belarus and Latvia
Will not bother her more than fleetingly. Taps on her telephone
By regiments of secret police and righteous timeservers
Will roll off her like waves against the prow of a solid ship,
As will the variously bellowed instructions of captains
And lieutenants, which she will either ignore or, when
Absolutely necessary, pause to acknowledge blandly,
Smiling her merely pleasant or most nonchalant winning smile,
And travel on, regardless - to San Francisco or Saint Petersburg,
Sfakia, Wicklow or Aachen, Barcelona, Forest Hill or Kazimierz Dolny,
By whatever means of transport happen to be available,
Steering attentively whenever and wherever possible,
But equally trusting winds, seasons, stars, and the various
Contingent opportunisms and spontaneities of her
Clearly recognisable though always astonishing
Pre-written destiny, which she hears, sees, or scries,
Somehow unerringly, with the uncanny accuracy
Of lunatics, lovers, children, discoverers and genuises,
Even when she does not know it, even when
She finds herself constantly bumping into things.

Wearing dangly ear-rings, finger-rings, long wide skirts,
Hair richly henna'd, and blue varnished fingernails,
She will drink beer in village squares with visiting businessmen, Slum it in squats and smoke marijuana with hippies,
Wander in forests picking mushrooms with peasants,
Regale foreign visitors for hours with hilarious anecdotes
Of her life-story on long boring car journeys,
Learn sympathetic swearwords from embittered
Downtrodden servants, negotiate with their masters,
Dance at drunken parties a la Isadora Duncan,
Lecture passionately in faculties of distinguished
Universities, paying no heed to foibles of administrators,
Ferry wreaths of roses to graves of exiled poets,
Spend hours on the telephone gossiping with friends
Then turn the answering machine for weeks on end to avoid
The hangers on, well-wishers, neurotics and connection seekers
Who cluster around her, attracted to her gargantuan energy,
Like bees to honey, like mosquitoes to sweet flesh,
And sit in front row circles of metropolitan opera houses.

Nor will the classy nasals of fashionable capitals
Innuendoes of their snobs, or ironies of their intellectuals
Arrest her on her way, or cause her concern or dismay.

She is called back to Silesia, Saxony and Slovakia,.
Addressed by voices in a dialect part Polish, Czech and German,
And chants of gone families command her attention endlessly.
Rich merchants, refugees on the move, commandants, comrades,
Wizards, wastrels, lovers, philanderers, chess-players,
Mountaineers, miners, musicians, saints and martyrs
Murmur in her dreams - and she believes in angels
Whose breath is fire, who walk on cloudless nothing,
Whose will struggles only with the densities of flesh,
And who speak the quiet lingua franca of the spirit
All shall hear, one day, and shall all inherit.
Her love for this world rests ageless and shamelessly,
Naked and transparent in the core of her being
And the key she possesses to unlock it at will
Is pure recognition of the same bright core in everyone,
Unhidden, unsentimental, as in an uncorrupted child.