Hospitality

just one day
just one love
just one truth in sharp cadenzas
thanksgiving nights of the sharing lobe
with the organza'd Lupita
and the living creatures of the aural dreaming
fireworks, crackers, maracas and the valley of the wolf
sweeter and more exciting though the chile hot music
which heaving like a gamboling ship up on an early beat
rocks to the riot and its cataclysmic hook
make us jump and sweat to the rolling horns
and the crazy jamboree of Spanish fiesta
and the warm brown gapped teeth of friendship
and the sangria of belting drums and throbbing heads
rush on the morning
and the curious curios of tired invention
of sub-tonic joy
the harmonic toy of fraternity
instantaneous like an explosion
now blued on the horizons of account
i still have the evidence on film
a relic in a box

so why didn't i return your
gracious hospitality when your letter came ?

the British were a xenophobic race
back then and haughty, less so i,
the treason as i recall was
part down to the impracticality
of living with my parents
some to my own mean spirit
because i could have asked but felt
ashamed of your peasant origins
and how wrong this was, how wrong this was
a book is in the reading
not the cover
and in the histories of the world
yours will be an honest courteous page
and mine a few scrawled lines of shame