Mañana dawdles in late afternoon;
sundown lolls on his deck above the sea
moon´s ghost attends the rising of the moon -
in the Hesperides we pass our time
laboriously not doing overmuch;.
The sky works round the clock; repeatedly
palm and hibiscus stage their pantomime.
Europe is far off; yet we stay in touch..

We´ve papers here, galore – your Allgemein
your Corriere, Telegraaf, Païs,
Mundo or Monde or Dagblad, here´s a fine
and fulsome gift of European tongues
babbling away – but then, should language fail,
still we have choice, for here in Paradise,
for the convenience of the package throngs,
they stock the Mirror and the Daily Mail

So Britain´s none too far – yet far enough,
to judge from what the papers say. It.seems
the country is abed, and sleeping rough,
a nightmare slumber in a third-rate hell,
crimes by the streetful, swindles by the load,
lies by the score, in triplicate, in reams,
the likely future a condemned hotel
slumped at the dead end of a potholed road

The Papermen pay court to the Celebs -
privileged helots at a shameless feast,
or else, the honoured tribunes of the plebs,
who represent the people´s interest
in football, fashion, and the music scene,
with narcophagic interludes, increased
devotion to pornography, and zest
for fake religions. And God help the Queen

God help us all, indeed, if what they say
is even half-way true - a broad account
up to a point, and in a general way
honestly meant, and almost accurate? –
but look, there´s nothing true under the Sun.
“If England were what England seems”, I´d count
myself well out of it, expatriate
in body, soul as hotly on the run

But she is not, nor can she be, because
the patria is seldom in the press.
The is of her is buried in in the was,
dispersed among remembered moments, caught
out of the dark of lost experience,
split seconds of a lifetime´s Englishness,
particles of diverse cognition, wrought
into a pattern of enduring sense.

You watch the points of light that stress the dark,
the separated stars, that meet your stare
as linked and lively constellations - mark,
that´s a pure fiction; it is the eye,
reading the night, designs the wheeling crew
of heroes, horses, heroines, bull and bear.
all the palaver of the glittering sky
turned to a narrative your childhood knew.

So with the shapes of patria; she exists
in constellations of those hidden stars
figuring in the mind´s eye, and persists
through all the stir of reminiscent years
until the starpoints pattern out a whole,
till these perceptions are as avatars
of warnings, prophecies, elations, fears,
the narratives of the wayfaring soul,

in recollections of discrete events,
of words that take heroic meaning in
the context of remembered sounds and scents:
the decent act; assurances that grow
out of the testimony of mute lives;
abiding friendship – there all stars begin.
Such lights I take for warrant, that although
England be lost, the patria survives.