Maroc - Poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 2002 by Douglas Dunn

Maroc

   Where can a man's imagination go
   Without insulting where a boy's once went
   Forty-approaching-fifty years ago?

   Not love. Not sex. Been there and got the grief.
   There's nothing left in that line to invent,
   Or improvise. The map on the flyleaf

   Of a book about Morocco drew me in
   To mounted gownie-men, hard-riding Rif
   Fighting the footsore French Foreign Legion

   In sketched mountains, with drawn passes, peaks,
   Oases, date palms, a walled and towered town.
   Perusing a map was one of my techniques

   For getting the hell out of the parish
   Of Inchinnan and its reductive keeks
   Into a larger world. I made a wish.

   I dropped my penny in the well of dreams,
   Into a deep, dark, distant, delayed splash.
   The world was everything that thinks and seems

   When I was twelve years old and dogging off
   Into a free mind, writing reams and reams--
   Invisible paper, invisible ink--my huff

   A truancy from self as much as school.
   "Why do you think so much of poetry, Prof?"--
   I don't. It's the obsession of a Fool

   For circumstance, an accidental cry
   Before the stocks and mocks of ridicule
   Without an answer to the question "Why?"

   Off, then, to Agadir, Fez, Marrakesh,
   To white-walled forts beneath Saharan sky,
   Tall, sizzling tagines, and heaped bowls of fresh

   Dates, oranges, the Kasbahs of Rabat,
   Tangier, and Casablanca, ancient Meknes,
   Volubilis, Sale, and Ourzazat.

   `As Time Goes By' ... No re-make's probable!
   Ah, Casablanca, there's no copycat
   Director could re-do how Bogie's skill

   Turned cynicism upside-down, said `love'
   Without the saying of it but the thrill-"Here's
   looking at you, kid,"--as if to prove

   Devotion, loyalty, above intrigue,
   And virtue something that--well, just rubs off
   From cut-price black-and-white cafe fatigue,

   Booze, smokes, tuxedos. By the final scene
   They'd overshot the budget. Some bigwig
   Demanded savings. On the silver screen

   It's all illusion anyway. They faked
   A one-dimensional getaway plane
   Built out of struts and canvas, a half-baked

   Stunt of cheap joinery, using midgets
   In long-shot--lyrical heartbreak
   Forged by dwarfs and skinflint deficits.

   I go by stamps, by the Sherifian post.
   I go by Gandon's designs, and make my visits
   To remote oases, to the farthermost

   Ramparted cities, gardens, empty coast,
   Sifted Sahara measuring the minutes,
   And fountained courtyards where I meet a ghost
   Under a palm. She says, "Let's call it quits."

Douglas Dunn is Professor of English and Director of the Scottish Studies Institute at the University of St. Andrews. Dunn has a long list of works to his credit, including recent poetry, The Donkey's Ears, and stories, Boyfriends and Girlfriends. Some of his other collections of poetry are Terry Street, The Happier Life, Love or Nothing, Barbarians, St. Kilda's Parliament, and Elegies. His Selected Poems was published by Faber in 1986. His poetry awards include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and the Whitbread Award. He has edited The Oxford Book of Scottish Short Stories and The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Verse.