I came when you were born,
but soon the flying stopped.
By the time I came again,
we drove in private cars
A June day under the Jungfrau.
Near the railway that brought her here,
an old woman sits on a bench.
She isn’t facing the Jungfrau
but the Hotel Belvedere
It isn’t what he said in Casablanca
and it isn’t strictly true. Nonetheless
we’ll always have them, much as we have Paris.
This month’s feature includes new work by contributors.
So I’m still alive and now I’m in Bratislava.
That’s funny. I hadn’t expected to be alive.
A sign in italics nudges us at the station:
Have an amazing time in Bratislava!
That’s funny: a straight-faced wish, offered in English
and then Slovakian, posted above the trash can
I always seem to have tickets
in the third or fourth balcony
(a perch for irony;
a circle of hell the Brits
tend to call ‘The Gods’),
and peer down from a tier
of that empyrean
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