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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         As You Sometimes Gently Remind Me…


                                One day I'll suddenly recall:
                                The sun exists!

                           Pasternak, “About These Poems”1


When the world focuses on a sheet of paper
In a little room where hopes have come to die
The pen can’t write out a prescription for life
Or limn the remedies for a fallen world

We begin our days as did Pasternak
A cup of tea against the fear, the fear
Unsure of the conflicting daily edicts
The babblings about ballrooms, tariffs, and arrests

Pasternak opened a window to light and fair

And to the children playing in the snow he cried,
“My dears, what century is it outside?”


1Translations vary