Testo Fellow Traveller

Rain for the last day that I will be known the way that I want them to know me
Rain for a porter's predictable leads on the darkening stain of my name
Rain like the morning you left with the international brigade
A streak of your face at the glass when the train pulled away

The aspidistra that refused to die
A miniature camera in a Cambridge tie
To get that Soviet control to crack a smile All in our file, my fellow traveler

Sleep for the telephone's silent receiver on its beetle-black back in the hall
Sleep for the bottle that rolled off my desk
Danced itself out on the floor
Sleep for the overturned ashtray splayed across an unmade bed
While I interrogate every word that I ever said

I fall from buildings into angry air
Lecture my students in my underwear
But once I was allowed to dream of you instead
My dear defected fellow traveler

How you booked your final passage
With a passport that you paid for with a pair of roller skates How you dyed your hair and mustache
Put on a mid-Atlantic accent but you couldn't stop the shakes
When they asked where you had come from
And you muttered, "That's a good one"
Though you were never really certain

Every umbrella down on Portman Square
Opens and closes to arraign our fair
Theory of something I can't picture anymore
A forgery for my fellow traveler
I won't wait to see
I still I believe in you and me, my fellow traveler