pengaz4 said:
can any one help me with a copy of leaving home by skrzynecki
or where to get one on the net
here you go:
Leaving Home.
My first country appointment
Was the last thing we expected-
Three of us, caught unaware
By ignorance and faith:
Our dull-witted, frog-mouthed obedience
To the letter of the law.
Counting door handles, ringing telephones
And office boys with denture smiles,
I waited three hours
For a two-minute interview;
Watching myself outside in the rain,
My severed head under one arm,
Body upright- best white shirt and tie-
A black suit to outdo
The Pallbearer of the year!
A red-and-white sign at my feet:
“Cabbages for sale.”
The fiddler from Chagall’s village
Was inviting me to dance.
The man behind the desk
Never once looked me in the eyes-
His face the back of my application papers.
Hawk-nosed, crew-cut, with
A Tally-Ho paper skin,
He was the millionth person
That couldn’t pronounce my name.
No more, no less,
The verdict came next day by phone:
“You must go.”
We packed the car
Like a war-time train- clothes,
Books, records, the poems
I’d started writing;
Said goodbye so quickly
I forgot for a moment where I was going.
Three hundred miles
Up the New England Highway, I stopped;
Unloaded my bags for the night;
Swore that Head Office
Would not see my face again
Unless I became my own Scipio Africanus…
Dreamt of three headless crows
Flying in a room
Whose walls were silently burning.
Bald, toothless faces
Stood at a window, laughing in the rain,
Clapping to a fiddle’s music –
Their naked, hairless bodies
The colour of sour milk.