Fellow Traveller

Fellow Traveller (旅伴) - John K. Samson

Rain for the last day that

I will be known the way that I want them to know me

Rain for a porter's predictable leads on the darkening stain of my name

Rain like the morning you left with the international brigade

A 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 traveler

Sleep for the telephone's silent receiver on

It's beetle black back in the hall

Sleep for the bottle that rolled off my desk

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 traveler

How you booked your final passage

With a passport they 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

Though 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

Forgery for my fellow traveler

I won't wait to see

I still believe in you and me my fellow traveler