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To Omar Khayyam

Omar – (do I need to insist
that’s the poet, not the terrorist?) –

when I was young and life was frantic
I found your poetry romantic –

a loaf of bread, a jug of wine,
and that non-gender-specific Thou,
about whom, scholars gracefully decline..

but now I’ve weathered the twentieth century
with perhaps a touch of grace

I’m equally content, and grateful too –
chewing on my baguette of chorizo,
the screw-top wine beside me,

in this battered caravan park
where immigrant children play
and TVs flicker in the dark
bringing desert headlines by night and day;

so, not oblivious to fate’s deals
and dust beneath the trailer wheels..

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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