the emigrée

• "There once was a country... I left it as a child... I am told"
• "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants... it may be by now a lie, banned by the state"
• "But I am branded by an impression of sunlight"
• "Sunlight... sunlight"
• "As time rolls its tanks... frontiers rise between us, close like waves"
• "The child's vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll opens and spills a grammar... every coloured molecule"
• "It tastes of sunlight"
• "White plane, It lies down in front of me docile as paper, love its shining eyes, takes me dancing through the city of walls"
• "They accuse me of being dark in their free city... They mutter death, and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight"