One Foot in Tangiers

Come dusk  
I pull on the grey djellaba  
hood up, hiding fair hair and blue eyes  
darting through narrow alleys  
steamy drains buzzing with blood  
the scream of chicken guts  
and a dagger in every doorway  
   
The smuggle, is cheap red wine,  
green bottles bruising brown paper bags  
clinking over cobbles, clumsily disguised  
past the fat policeman at the harbour gates  
where a joke and the taste of Marlborough  
never failed to strike him blind  
   
I ate with the fishermen, lounging on nets  
fingers dipping bread in a giant pot  
stalking sardines by moonlight  
wrestling octopus when there were none  
We laughed like brothers  
and drank to the sea from a single glass  
rim chipped blacker than the gutter's heart  
   
On Christmas Eve I climbed the hill  
to catch midnight mass at the English Church  
a stray dog, pores tingling with fishy wine  
I found a handful of Europeans  
goodwill stiffer than their pews  
every hymn scowled murder  
and it smelt like God wasn't home