There’s supposedly
a desk
at the airport
in Vienna,
for travellers
arriving there
in err,
mistaking Austria for
Australia,
dressed for the
desert outback,
wondering if they’ve
counterparts
who’ve made
a similar blunder,
traipsing about
in Sydney, garbed in
Lederhosen,
yodelling to the koalas
and the bobbing kangaroos.
Then there’s the skier
and St. Bernard
who booked a flight
to Swaziland—
toasting Africans
with their brandy
on the runway,
where they heard
it hadn’t snowed
in sixty years.
But I was the fool
of them all,
signing up to learn
some Javanese,
hoping to land
my dream job
in the halls of Toho Co,
animate Godzilla
for the screen,
or write a poem
of Nagasaki
for my students,
be a turnabout
Tokyo Rose,
tell them all on TikTok
it’s America who’s
victorious at the end,
my ignorance a bliss,
taking the bewilderment
on their faces
to be a look of
wondrous awe,
each bow
a reverent blessing
from the land of
the rising sun,
a meagre fifty-
thousand k’s
from an island
near Borneo,
where, I’ll be told,
they’re still expecting
my arrival, a limo
ready to take me
to wherever I’d like to go.
Andreas Gripp
July 7, 2024
RF Image
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