Pinochet and Foie Gras

.

The dinner was in my honour,
he said, for the visiting Englishman.
French exchange in eighty-eight.

Jean-Pierre’s friends included
another smallholder like him,
a land-owning communist lawyer,
a teacher, a builder,
and a young woman
who’d fled from Chile.

Whatever we talked about
has eroded with time;
if Proudhon and land-owning were aired,
wine would have kept things light –
our persiflage, a safer world,
worlds away from Pinochet.

The embodiment of grief sat still,
a tight-lipped aura we tried to include,
to ease the discomfiture
that she’d brought with her
what she’d left behind.

Next morning, a shrill dawn chorus
of shrieking, clanging pain woke me
like an arresting knock on the door,
manhandling me out of bed.

Over breakfast, Jean-Pierre smiled,
désolé, force-feeding, he said,
it’s cruel but necessary – 
as if an apology could ever suffice.

November 2013