If you want to understand neglect
There is an old British cemetery
On Canal Suez Boulevard
Where the imperial bones of Europe
Rot just like the rest of us; the grass
Has reaped great profit from their downfall
And no one cares to trim it
As is the custom
In gusty England.

In one era or another
(it matters little which)
Arab youths reduced many a gravestone
To the dust of God,
Shattered the stony faces of doleful girls
Beneath the common hammer
As their fathers must have split
Their molded church-bells
And melted them down for coffee trays.
Their oppressors could protest little
And care far less, and so the conversation
Leading from the sullied graveyard
Must have fallen somewhat
One of them might have shouted again
But the others quieted him
And talk turned to the climbing price of mangoes
Or the embarrassed talk of women.

Revolutions have turned the city
On its head,
But the foreign departed still loaf about
In no hurry to return to the earth.
Now, a filthy grave dog treasures the shade
Of a warped tombstone
The crows who remember
Perch on crypts, remembering.
The young strut about in jeans
Their fathers panicking together
Over beaten coffee trays
At the state of their country; the British
Are still here after the revolution,
Yet somehow
Only they are at peace.