Interloper

She pushes open the door, and everything
she's had to learn from scratch is there.
How can she go through with dinner,
with the panelled walls and the real flowers?

She has schooled herself not to turn her head
to the woman who serves her soup,
to grasp the fish knife, fruit fork, white wine glass
accurately, without hesitation.

She has learnt about dinner (not tea) and lunch (not dinner),
where supper fits in and how to say hors d'oeuvres
but she is the pea, careful in new clothes,
under the hundred mattresses.

It is possible to lean on the arm of a chair,
enjoy the wine, let someone blow cigar smoke
into your hair, rise when everyone else does,
call a taxi, say a slow goodbye.

It is possible to keep the heirlooms:
three syllables in medicine, the chats
with the Ladies’ Cloakroom Attendant. It is possible,
it is necessary, it is so much harder

to say what you think about public schools,
private libraries, the minimum wage and Culture,
to leave the label inside your coat and use
— at table — dirty words like class.

from The Unicorn

A city under fog is what I imagine.
My mother says she doesn't know her language
but, poking through the contours still, here are
the tower blocks of bach and bore da,
the spires of ach yn fi, diolch n fawr,
two syllables to pool, cool, towel.
She was the kid, marching into the NAAFI
(Scared hid under Stuck-Up) straight from the Valleys
to be told by her English friends, It's Roast, not Rorst.
Later, at the butchers, she asked in best
Received Pronunciation for Roast Poke.
It was our favourite story, her best joke.
She might as well have been a Unicorn,
our Mum — so different, despite the uniform.

… Uniform Yankee Control, go ahead, over.            
That’s her. Listen. She’s guiding down the Victor
with that same voice, that accent. She doesn’t waver.
It’s dusk, there’s fog (East Anglia in winter)
and here’s my Dad, working in the hangar:
checking the nav, the radio, the radar,
listening in on the girls up in the tower.
I’m making this all up, of course: how later
she will admire (but not let on) his saunter
across the dancefloor (all meant to impress her).
Even before they first step out together,
the language of their surnames (the one that neither
speak), cities and fog, both sides of a border
already join my father to my mother.      

My mother says I'm sorry, I don't speak Welsh.
The man repeats in English what he'd said
in English first time round. And now my Dad,
my Neasden Dad, wants fish and chips in Welsh
which he can’t speak. Salt and vinegar
on all of them? Ydw. (He hears, repeats!)
Diolch yn fawr. I want to disappear                       
into the Welsh rain dousing the Welsh street.      
Instead we’re running through it to the car,           
to daub at fogged-up windows, fret at the sign           
(Dim Parcio — No Parking) we’d missed before,
unwrap our steaming parcels. My sister and I           
take turns to try this new-old tongue: Croeso!       
Welcome, stupid tourists! Dim Parcio!                     
Dim Parcio.  You can’t keep crossing over,
you have to choose: one side or the other.
Or they choose you. You’re English (you’re not Welsh,
you’ve just got a weird name) — and you sound posh.

When you ask me, Where do you come from? 
How do I answer?  How does anyone?      
All of us sound different on my street.      
In each of us, so many of these crossings
–  and in this city, so many crossings meet.
Say ach y fi.  Say bore da.  Say Croeso.
The unicorn behind me stops to drink
unnoticed by the rowers at Hollow Pond,
unseen by the plane that turns to join the stack
circling above the city, waiting to land.

 

………………………………………………………………………………………….
ach y fi: an exclamation of disgust
diolch yn fawr: thank you very much
bore da: good day, hello
ydw: yes
croeso: welcome
NAAFI: National Air Armed Forces Institute, the canteen.
Hollow Pond: Located in E11, London.