Migrants March, Genoa, July 19, 2001

After the warm embrace

of a cheerful revolutionary monk from Salerno

I get to chatting in some kind of  pidgin

to an Iraqi man who has pedalled

all the way here from Paris on a rickshaw.

‘Cead Mile Failte’, our ten word Italian lexicon,

my leaving cert pass French,

salut, comment tu apples?

The universal bits of English

like ‘War’ and ‘McDonalds’.

Then

our conversation’s broken up

by the roar that meets

a band of Kurds arriving

in Piazza del Kennedy

behind the yellow banner of the PKK.

And then eighty cyclists

hooting and whooping in from Berlin.

The slogans surging up the back

of fifty thousand throats

to greet them in our provisional republic.

Free-Free Kurdistan.

So-So Solidarité.

A- Anti- Anti-capitalista.

Un altro mondo é possible.

Noi siamo tutti clandestini.

A language we all understand.

Is there any such thing as Ireland?