With guavas and Pablo Neruda, we came 
to the greenness

of this land, but our attempts 
to meet the king

came to nothing. Confined to the blackness 
of my shell, I was a crab

tied in red string, well-positioned 
at the royal feast, but not

as I would have wished. 
That I might speak

briefly with his highness 
of such things

as weigh upon me. To the foreshore 
I fled, while in the distance

his crab-shaped crown shook 
its pincers at the sun.

Unfathomable morning, 
these things heavy

upon my heart, I sought counsel 
amidst the graves

of his ancestors—four corners of the sky 
held in place

by volcanic boulders—and beneath 
the unmoving clock faces

of his kingdom. Minute hands, hour hands . . . 
I waved my pincers

in bafflement. Together, you and I 
sought instead

the company of shellfish—those lowliest 
citizens of this island—

in the mudflats where immigrant families 
competed with pigs

for mussels. Later, you were a weather balloon 
that you might gain

his attention, but as the day wore on 
you were caught in an updraft

above the Cathedral of 
the Burning Tyre—and it was not a done thing

to be higher than 
his kingliness.

Nightfall, we were both 
brass instruments

of the Royal Army Band—that we might 
phrase our questions

in a language he understood. But, 
for the sound of ourselves

we could not hear 
a word of his reply. Not for

the sirens of a sinking ferry, brakes 
and stammering exhaust of royal carriage—

a London cab crossing 
the potholed kingdom.