Fellow Traveller

After his statement, Blunt, who is now 72, broke down in tears. Then he left the Times looking a lonely figure, and pursued by pressmen.”
—BBC Nine O’Clock News, November 20, 1979
Rain for the last day that I will be known
the way that I want them to know me
Rain for reporters’ predictable leads
on the darkening stain of my name
Rain, like the morning you left with the International Brigade
the 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 traveller.
Sleep for the telephone’s silent receiver
on its beetle-black back in the hall
Sleep for the bottle that rolled off my desk
and 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 traveller
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,” that 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 travelers
I won’t wait to see
I still believe in you and me
My fellow traveller