Peacetime or war
there are deserters to round up,
warrants to be issued
by the clerk of rules.
In the riotless city
of fashionable slums
no one staggers through jungle
to reach the border,
uniform ditched in the grass,
rifle upside down for a crutch.
No body bags accrue
in Parliament Gardens,
just the nightly sarcophagi
of plastic and rags -
the blacks and drinkers
who are never you.
Unless of course
you have come to join them:
has some endlessness hooked your gaze
and called ‘follow'?
You cannot say why or what for?
Throw your ID off the jetty
to fake drowning. Disappear
among the undergrowth of crowds,
the air for your premises.
Enter it through some pilgrimage door
and in the process become invisible.
You might as well be far off
as Canada for all the hope
of you being found.
They can pin up your photo
at the post office all they like
but you have gone from your name,
your face only a beard,
toes blue in rotten sandals.
