Sidi Ifni

We walked down
A long promenade
Down a winding stair
Wide as boulevards
Vines and shrubs
Grew between the steps
From the Spanish town
To the African sea

We drank wine
And toasted to the day
When she was the queen
Before the long decay
We drank wine
Slept off hangovers
Lethargy, decay
And forgotten loves

We’d awake
To the BBC
An old English queen
On the balcony
Wander ’round
Abandoned consulates
An old broken chair
On the marble stair
And from the roof
See Canary seas
The discarded runway
Of Sidi Ifni

We drank wine
Lying on our backs
On the warm tarmac
In a bowl of stars

Well, I went down
Mostly on my own
Till I was alone
In that shipwrecked house
Through the porthole sea
An epiphany
I would never leave this place alive
I drink gin
With the old ex-pats
We are broken things
From a broken past
And it comes near;
But just out of grasp
The alchemist words
That would bring her back