Walking

Und noch einmal Heimgarten - Heimgarten revisited 38,5 x 48,5 cm

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If you walk over from Camogli

to Portofino you will see people there

you won’t like and who will not like you.

Sweaty in muggy heat, wearing

cut-offs, hiking shoes, a day-pack

full of provisions(cheaper)you look

across the miniscule piazza at the rich

and their yachts the thing about

the rich you point out to your girlfriend

who’s struggling to suppress a yawn

a struggle which is

turning her face into a sort of quivering jello or pudding 

the thing about the rich 

is that they will always be with us.

A very private chorus of angels

cries out, “Bravo, bello, bravissimo!”

                                               I have bad hair,

you say, I carry my lunch around in Tupperware.

And they will always despise me for that. Use conditioner,

she advises, yawning thickly, and let them

eat off gold plate or paper plate,

who cares?

Later that evening

you are having dinner at a trattoria in Sestri Levante. She

chooses the “surprise” menu, and you, something

tasty but unchallenging. Her Primo is pasta pimped

with primary hues, her Secondo a sumptuous piece of lemon

nudging grilled sea bass. Fruit, grappa, then coffee.

The waiter looks at you with pity,

looks at your girlfriend with

substantially more of the same.

Well past midnight and back at your hotel in

Monterosso you listen to her breathe. Slow, even,

unconscious breaths. There’s a nightingale outside

the window. Deeper, further into the night

a couple is groaning, urging each other on

to greater performance, inspiring you

to reach across, wake her up, touch her into life. 

But you hesitate, wondering how she’d react, and as uncertainty

hardens, takes over, a thousand crickets reclaim the night. 

 Imogen Heap and Jeff Beck

Blanket