Lines to an Ambassador

For H.T.M.

You call nothing by diminutives

Yet remain on familiar terms with

Objects, large or small, which have the grace

To survive the shuffle of fashion.

Here imperfection has become an art

And litter part of the landscape. You,

Who wish to inhabit both place

And time, will be glad to reach a land

Where the tram's pace and the llama's gait

Permit the slow-motion of gesture;

And exegesis can retard the sun,

Our impulse to retreat to mirrored rooms.

You will delight in a culture of

Knotted strings, where the immigrant horse

Enjoys equality with the wheel;

Where cyclopean stones in the high Andes

Deface the century's arrogance.

The curative siesta's shade will

Magnify and brighten fecund stars.

Not everything will seem desirable.

Poverty and ignorance are real,

Rooted in a scanty soil: unlike

The affluence that beggars us, the

Treadless tyres, potholes in new roads.

May for you the spurious name of

The ocean not deceive: and your courtly

Calendar be ringed with holy days,

Your treasured clocks tick imperceptibly.

In an eclectic land there will be choice

And time to make choice, which is to act.

These lines, doodled beside the phone,

Scrawled on the train, or when TV goes out,

Contain congratulations to you both:

May excellence entitle your book of days.