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Manhattan and San Francisco

King Civil Rights and Malcolm Black Power

LBJ and Voter bills,

did it all just come down to

nakedness?

OK, you’re all set

in all-American

signature phrase

said the wholly pleasant

case officer.

Set to go, stamped passport visa, enjoy your stay.

Scholar resident

like a hundred arriving others.

Euston Square to Times Square

for sure.

This new Londoner’s theatre-curtain of importance

duly lowered,

on and into high Atlantic

treading the

Queen Elizabeth

Southampton

to New York time

and Fulbright America.

Was my best banner

simply to have kept my clothes on,

kept my pink-Brit flesh wrapped?

Had I saved America

or myself,

or the both of us

from exposure?

New York Magic Mountain

Sailing into New York Harbor

past verdigris-statued Liberty

was I not latest Columbus,

if lower deck passenger

then still

the Drake or Raleigh?

Hardly, had my stomach been first to say.

Anxious to match the Atlantic

my reading was

Mann’s Mountain

but where Castorp and Joachim fevered towards death