Sidi Ifni

We walked down

a long promenade

Down a winding stair,

wide as boulevards

Vines and shrubs

grew between the steps

From the Spanish town

to the African sea

We drank wine

and toasted to the day

When she was the queen,

before the long decay

We drank wine,

slept off hangovers

Lethargy, decay

and forgotten loves

We’d awake

to the BBC

An old English queen

on the balcony

Wander ’round

abandoned consulates

An old broken chair

on the marble stair

And from the roof,

see Canary seas

The discarded runway

of Sidi Ifni

We drank wine

lying on our backs

On the warm tarmac,

in a bowl of stars

Well, I went down,

mostly on my own

Till I was alone

in that shipwrecked house

Through the porthole sea

an epiphany

I would never leave this place alive

I drink gin

with the old ex-pats

We are broken things,

from a broken past

And it comes near;

but just out of grasp

The alchemist words

that would bring her back