Arad, Romania
At ease on a cracking
splintery bench in the Serbian slums,
with the Old Theatre on the eastern side
flaking down into the street,
I’m savoring the early sun’s
clarifying warmth.
In the market round the corner,
boxy slabbed cafés are serving
rum as well as coffee to the men
who smoke all hours.
There’s only me, though, in the square.
The pigeon-throating air.
A fountain. Puddled, strewn. A concrete arch
with concrete soldiers issuing.
Loneliness, lonelinesses driven into life
down aching streets to twilight and beyond,
recede as if they never were
in another person’s past.
Hours, hours could pass without my stir.
Perhaps the river, later,
if there is a path.
poem by Roger Craik