Wanderlust

Imagine.
You die in a foreign country.

For all the world you're just
A little wheezy
Outside the apotheke
Outside le tabac;
You're just
Clutching your chest in some bazaar
Looking at your shoes beneath the town clock
Clench-jawed at the crash of the falls.

When your knees touch the cobbles
A cyclist flicks a glance like a bogey;
When it gets so
It gets so
It's like inhaling goulash
It's like trying to breathe Roquefort.

You hear limes rustle in the rain
Racoon-dogs as they gentle through the underbrush
Like adolescent digits ghosting pubic hair
Searching for that cleft
Searching for that
O God

The smell of old lightning and paprika
Plantain frying
And the sky
Sits on your chest
Coaxes you supine in a field of cornflowers
Forces you down like a lover
In the alley behind a jazz club.

You upset your Semillon;
You crease in your Greyhound seat
And no one knows you
No one knows you
And you realise
That the stranger holding your hand
Will get over this.