Yesterday reading my life
in the leaves on which
the thrown-out baby
landed

and my future in salts
left on terraced towels
when the bath water
evaporated

I knew to go
unmoneyed but showered
to the closing Sunday
of the art show.

Unable when pressed to say
whether the skinned-rabbit-
in-tub-of-blood photograph
or the snack bar

across the aisle where eaters
washed down sausages with beer
and machine coffee
was worse

I turned the corner
embracing every third passer-by
impartially until security
intervened.

The price of art is high, without the art,
my only home a country I have left,
and my houses sold – perhaps they’re sold again.
I am here to make a baby, get some sleep
and maybe get acquainted if there’s time.
The second goal is difficult, the third
impossible. I cannot know myself
so how can conversation teach me you?

Your genes and mine survived the Deccan Traps
by keeping distance. Commentators claim
we must resolve the situations in
the Middle East, Afghanistan, New York,
all three hard places where their many poor
die younger than the average Senegalese.
Your genes and mine, and the Deccan Traps, say, ‘Must?’
No words have ever solved a single problem.

Perhaps we’ve made a baby. Conversation
provides diversion – we don’t ask from what
because we have more knowledge than we need
and know our only future’s through a child.
Revering parents does not bring them back
nor cancel when we hurt them by not caring,
and the memory of the Deccan Traps is long
but nothing that’s accessible to us.