Unreal

                                        . . . I drank

and was surprised

to see what looked like tea leaves

at the bottom

of the cup . . . minutes

later a great warm green wave

or cloud

began advancing towards me. “Look at the boats

on his shirt,” I felt myself trying

to say, in Spanish, or Moroccan, yet knowing

I knew

none of the words . . .  

                                         it was bright

morning, and the train had arrived

and emptied

at Chamartín before I finally

pried open my eyes, and saw

on the carriage floor

nothing but an unfamiliar

pair of trainers: cracked

white leather, with three green stripes. “Mister — 

or rather Herr — Adolf

Dassler made these,” I thought. But which

of the two friendly men with whom

I’d shared the carriage, and some wine,

had been wearing them? I pondered

this awhile, then fell

asleep again . . .

                              and did

Herr Dassler visit, personally, all the cities inscribed

on his trainers? Koln, Dublin, Paris, Montreal,

Kopenhagen, Bern, Amsterdam . . . and fit

the trainer to the city? Rom, like these, Vienna,

London . . .    

                    Señor Dassler, I am dreaming of you

on a bench on a platform in a train station

in Madrid, unable

to wake up, a pair

of your trainers, that weren’t mine, but now are,

on my feet . . .    

                           I am swimming, Herr

Dassler, in your wake, though I fear

you are dead, a corpse washed clean by the numbing tides

with three slanting stripes emblazoned

on your chest, your passport and your wallet

drifting to the ocean floor . . .    

                                                      I discovered

in a pocket — oh! the kindness

of strangers! — about

forty pesetas; but casting

around for a joke or silver lining, I found

nada — or niente, as I put it

to my shoes . . . closing

my eyes, I imagined fingers untying

and easing off my Reeboks, as the train

hurtled through the darkness, the men trying

them on in turn, the ex-owner of these

flexing his toes, padding up and down, nodding

approval. They must have whispered

like parents, as they lifted my shirt and unfastened

my money belt, or perhaps, more like surgeons, they used

scissors, or a knife . . .    

                                         snicker-snack! I watched

the vorpal blade trace

arabesques across my breastbone, hover, then slide

between two ribs. Chug-chug

went the trains. The heat

was building, the potion

at last wearing off. How light

I’d be, I now

began to reason, as quick and canny

as a lizard, a perfectly camouflaged

lizard, who’d shed a skin and acquired a new

way of walking.