Classic Poem

His pockets full of poems, fingers stained
from packs of Camels, green eyes wet from tears,
Draza Bregovich looks from the plane,
forgetting where he’d lived for twenty years.

America was free, but he could never
master its tongue, his phrases always strange,
his Balkan humour neither wry nor clever,
his sad and off-beat verses lacking range.

He stares out at the Alps and Italy,
lost in the composition of a line,
and then he sees the Adriatic sea,
and Montenegrin hills of spruce and pine.

When at last he sets down in Belgrade,
two plain-clothes agents greet him; crows take wing;
dust burns in his eyes; and memories fade;
yet Draza Bregovich begins to sing.