A straight-backed bike <br />Bone-shaker, with a broken chain <br />Sunday p.m. at the Rabbi's home <br />For Hebrew hour, just down the lane <br />Buried deep under the twisting vowels <br />Waiting quite patiently to see <br />The Monkees singing on TV <br /> <br />Loud boys invade the bus from school <br />After class with 'Fish' and 'Ning' <br />Rugby games, warm winter showers <br />Wearing short pants and dirty knees <br />Latin midweek, on Saturdays <br />Futile dallying with Greek <br /> <br />England from her goddesses estranged <br />Rude, she begs to be refined <br />I study her peculiar ways, as if <br />Infatuated by a witch <br />Who draws strong circles, cleans the spring <br />Carves wood to make her sticks and broom <br />With all her boys confined in thrall <br />And to a clammy reading room <br /> <br />He thought I'd be a diplomat, the Head <br />And he was right, that was to come <br />But now, merciless tickling <br />Over a Master's knee, and in <br />Some circumstances more extreme <br />A cricket bat across the bum <br /> <br />He must have kept high hopes for me <br />But little did he know of lands <br />For which I would turn traitor, of <br />The soil I was to hold and tread <br />But all through time, England remains <br />I wonder, would she take me back <br />And have me for herself again? <br /> <br />She dances with her sadness in the sky <br />I watch, holding my leaves of literature <br />The Isis Morning smiling in the dawn <br />At me and my examination gown <br />After May Ball, her memories, a look <br />To bring me consolation, as exile <br />Holds me within its ever-stubborn hands, <br />The pages of a foreign-language book.<br /><br />Frank Bana<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/memories-and-dirty-knees/
