Fellow Traveller

Rain for the last day that I will be known the way that I want them to know me
Rain for a porter's predictable leave on the darkening stain on my name
Rain like morning you left with the international brigade
The streak of your face at the glass when the train pulled away

The aspodistra that refused to die
Minature camera in a Cambridge tie
To get that Soviet control to crack a smile
All in our file my fellow traveller

Sleep for the telephone silent receiver on its beetle black back in the hall
Sleep for the bottle that rolled off my desk and danced itself out on the floor
Sleep for the overturned ashtray splaid across an unmade bed
While I interrogate every word that I ever said

I fall from buildings into angry air
Lecture my students in my underwear
But once I was allowed to dream of you instead
My dear defected fellow traveller

How you booked your final passage
With a passport that you paid for with a pair of roller-skates
How you died your hair and moustache
Put on a mid-Atlantic accent but you couldn't stop the shakes
When they asked where you had come from
And you muttered "that's a good one" but you were never really certain

Every umbrella down on Portman Square
Opens and closes to a rain affair
Theory of something of something anymore
Forgery for my fellow travellers

I wont wait to see
I still believe in you and me my fellow traveller