I listen to and learn from the eulogy

for a poet from my village recognised in his death

this awaits me or vice versa

or verses versus verses 

a book is not its cover

but a chimera to ward off stereotypification

a taxi ride among a cavalcade of red tail lights

to where the bokeh is okay

I met Billy and his grandson Ryan in the x-ray waiting room

his eyes had red circles around them

as if he'd spent a lifetime crying

he joked he'd been hiding behind a tent 

at the siege of Rorke's Drift

and that I'd limped with a different leg on leaving

not much chance to use the old language here

where Iolo Morganwg tells me to buck up

in a minaret multi storey car park 

named after our patron saint

our capital city its smart centre

the ordinary radiating roads

(who are they named after?)

the tarmaced-together suburbs

their Chinese supermarkets and eateries

the heirs of the enquiring minds 

that dreamed up gunpowder navigation and printing

I sniff around the outskirts of the spirit skirt

and the gaps in people 

some good gaps some not so

but do the flatlands feel the imprint

of the inundations of their moulding?