The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing “The Foreign Office” by Victoria Broome
The Foreign Office
for Judy and Roscoe
He had two great passions and one dream,
Mozart, The Great Wall and romance. In soft
morning light he rode out on a rented bicycle
to see the Great Wall. Smoke and steam rising,
the sound of air rushing through wheels on
the broken road. He felt the hard saddle, his feet
in the pedals, he felt hopeful.
The breeze coolly lifted the hair from his neck,
every now and then he turned to watch autumn
colours bleed and fade out in his trail, people
flowed past, their voices washed over him.
A river around an obstacle, a moment in time.
A young woman who would become his wife,
is travelling on a train to Peking, a very English
girl, with fine auburn hair and eyes like Audrey
Hepburn’s, she even has the same long swan neck.
( That was his memory, she was still unaware of herself.)
On the rocking train, in the vast landscape,
she is attempting to roll up the hair of her Chinese
girlfriend, it is a thick black mystery and hairpins
spring from it like coiled dragons.
It was an exotic world then, travelling through
the orient and the old silk road, eating apricots
in Persia. Life in the Foreign Office in the 1960’s.
They don’t meet yet, they are still travelling
towards their futures.
(c) Victoria Broome
Published in Flap: The Chook Book 2, 2010
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As I posted on Saturday 17, I am currently refeaturing Tuesday Poems from the past four years “by poet”, i.e. focusing on those instances where I’ve featured more than one poem by the same poet. I am also doing so alphabetically (by surname), which makes this week’s poet Victoria Broome.
To read Victoria’s bio, please click through to the original feature, here.