Remember Blava Poem by John a'Beckett

Remember Bratislava? Famed for its Slovak
wine, named by James, our local friend, Blava.
Not what we had in mind, the Hapsburg hot city
hugging a high brow of Danube, a bit in fits
and starts -if you can flash back to them-.rather
deep set in boulder flesh- as if in Time’s gritty
a pagan would carve her; you dressed in blue
summer cool; me, predicting rain in a Mac
boots and hat and somewhat tat balaclava.

Conjure up, then, from a night of black magic
the hot blaze, white Slovakian brine-history's
off-skew maturity, her soil's grapes greening
to recall another just-gone golden autumn’s fan
wind from hills, names of our days careening
into the off-beat rhythm of living; and gloom
out-weighed by gaiety. Remember ditching
plans for 'total spontaneity'? And to having

fanatically town Burdovice as a firm destination
but being holed up in what I guess was Modra-
the name disappears into this 'language of nation'-
then, on that majestic abandoned street, recall us
getting wonderfully nowhere, holding thumbs out,
waving desperate hands filled with money- how
the big black dog came out and fell to sleep in
the middle of the road as if to snore in palaver
'You are where you want to be, now.'

God knows how we got out of there. I think
James must have spoken to the local mayor.
and some sort of god also mysterious, near
the sun-peeled, white wooden church,
just-abandoned. Ah, remember that bare
incomprehensible, rain-rinsed deep blue
granite breath of our Small Carpathian air.