After
the warm embrace
of a cheerful revolutionary monk from Salerno
I get to chatting in some kind of pidgin to an Iraqi man
who has pedalled all the way here from Paris on a rickshaw.
‘Cead Mile Failte’, our ten
word Italian lexicon,
my leaving cert pass French, ‘salut-
comment- tu apples?’,
the universal bits of English like ‘War’
and ‘McDonalds’.
Then our conversation’s broken up
by the roar that meets a band of Kurds
arriving in Piazza del Kennedy
behind the yellow banner of the PKK.
Then eighty cyclists hooting and whooping in from Berlin.
The slogans surging up the back of fifty thousand throats
to greet them to our provisional republic.
FREE FREE KURDISTAN
SO-SO-SOLIDARITÉ
A-ANTI-ANTI-CAPITALISTA
UN ALTRO MONDO É POSSIBLE
NOI SIAMO TUTTI
CLANDESTINI
A language we all understand;
Is there any such thing as Ireland?
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