This week’s Tuesday poem from New & selected: Tour of duty

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From the Hamburg office they’d moved him to Oslo, in the hope
that he would manage his addictions; whether alcohol or coke
no one knew, but the rumours festered round the intranet –
had he attended rehab? Had his family found out yet?

In the silence of his room in the Marriott, or at home,
he’d check into the mirror trying to fathom out the doom
that he knew was his to make, yet it made him what he was -
could he change his conception of what a man always does?

Could he tighten up the slack and overcome the inertia?
Could he follow the religion of some Sufi nut from Persia?
Could he hold fast to the love he’d felt outside his scope?
Could he overcome his devils and find some thread of hope?

He’s flying tourist now to a land he doesn’t know -
the success of his life is his willingness to go -
and at every leaving with his passport in his hand,
he feels a panic of departure that he doesn’t understand.

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