Gathering around that table tonight As a hurricane dropped its rain steadily I entered without asking, almost Too suddenly the heart of a country After almost three years of coming Face to face with it. Dropping out Of an August sky, my first flight, I saw Green streets, which meant I would Find it at least tolerable, cars on Serpentine highways, silvery wakes Of boats out on the lakes, a landscape To which I owed no remembrance And which offered nothing in return yet, Just a new country for a voluntary exile.

It then took me a long time, To move from the sidewalk To the threshold and then some more To be allowed to take part in That telling of a street’s folklore A welter of memory, intersection And association, a fine net snagging The slow turn of the years, a street marker’s arrow that points a stranger towards a vision, a possibility of finding his way to a belonging, at the heart of a country now becoming his own.