Third Men
consider the grey butterfly
flapping from one colour
to a brighter one,
flirting like Commie lasses
I knew in Pimlico,
or 1950s diplomats on the Levant –
exotics – suddenly stirred by the whiff
of a flight-path to Moscow
it was an old Mosquito
that flew me to Beirut, where answering
the snare-test of “A writer of a colour?” with my “Yes,”
I – of The Times, no less –
was rushed to a bright balcony
in some backstreet
and She who’d rushed me there
was blasted by a voice
I never met – “You silly silly girl, he’s ‘Brown’
not ‘Greene’ and bloody years too young,” and so
I missed my drink
with Kim but other gins aplenty
lay in wait for me
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