***
Chasing San Francisco
22 years since our last meeting.
I am older.
So is the Golden Gate City.
Armed with a sweater,
“Devotion” by Patti Smith,
I sit by fires
with red blends and Sangioveses.
I see the birds of all the races,
While reading the mists over the bridges
At breakfasts.
Frisco from a ferry
On a late December evening
Is a sharp blade of secrets and colours
That I could cut my breath.
Time is a knife here,
So does sound.
They say on billboards:
“Time is money. Save both!”
An immediate question:
Why do i spend them
So unapologetically?
Bone-chilling American advertisements…
I see the chain of palazzos
Of the present-day California,
An Enchanted concrete and glass forest
Of offices and eyes –
Dominant,
But still secondary to the water.
On the ferry
I thought of my two Decembers
In San Francisco –
Besieged by out-of-tune loud voices
Of the US people,
I feel like I never knew those voices
And will never know.
