MILK & HONEY

oh dear diedre were your forests deeper
were your skies not wider before you crossed the water?

when the ship puts into ellis after the heaving in the steerage
and they put you through the wash and the rine and the wringer
and the little man from immigration sneering
at your papers gives you a new name cause he can’t pronounce your mother’s
and it’s a ferry to the city it’s like a beehive full of honey

and it is tall and full of buzzing and you are small and clean and rusty
from the atlantic or the seven seas or the 747
and you’re foreign and you’re frozen and your forever just caught up with you
you fall behind just standing still while the bees they buzz about you

oh maria were your thoughts not clearer
were your breezes kinder before you left the island

and all roads lead to alphabet city that’s the kind of place for a drone like you
where the streets they look like alleys and the one room rooms they have no view
and the radiators hiss like a dragon and the streets breathe steam like there’s life below and the radiators moan and ring like a jail like the city is a jail not a honeycomb

so you find a piece of work in the bowery in a failing all night chop house
chop the onions whistle tangos wait on tables and the impulse to get moving
throw your apron down roam the streets to the private sound
of your mama’s old accordion blocking out the honey making buzz of this town

to cut a dash in the city must you be flash or pretty
or harder than a harley driving sailor riding her hog out to sea?

so you hear about the tracks and the trails and the trains and the black dirt for the taking and you’re a farm girl from the balkan ukraine netherland mountain range
anyway you buy a ticket stick your thumb out trade your cooking for a wagon seat
cause everyone knows that the rivers run gold and the hills are full of silver like a treacly sweet

but everywhere you go it’s the same show sure the sun it drips like honey
and the rain weeps on the young grain like a generous flow of money
but the black dirt for the taking’s all been stolen sold and lost
as if the very wealth of milk and honey turned honey bees into paper wasps
so you scratch out a living on an acre or ten
if you can keep it from the banks and the whistling wind
and you’ll never see the fiords or the steppes or the fens
or the alps or the yellow river again
and you’ll love the country cause you gotta love
but you’ll die a foreigner in a foreign land
with a snatch of your mother’s song in your lung
and a fistful of dirt brown dirt in your hand

oh my molly what is this folly what do all the country girls see far beyond the sea?

spring 1999 sydney australia
© myshkin 1999