ALWAYS WITH YOU

On a snowy January Saturday

we were delayed for six hours or so

at Ferenc Liszt airport, Budapest.

Except for the purchase of a Pick sausage

and a small box of Gerbeaud chocolates

in Heinemann Travel Value/Duty Free

we spent our time in the Leroy Bistro

with its international fast food cuisine

from nigiri sushi to Wiener Schnitzel.

From my seat in the bistro I could see

continually an advert, a fifteen

by forty feet video with, on the left,

Budapest’s Chain Bridge superimposed

on its Parliament with the Danube bluely

flowing beneath and blue bird sky above

stretching to the right, from east to west,

as the river’s embankment became

China’s Great Wall, and the slogan read

in red ‘Bank of China Always With You’.

We watched, as day darkened into night,

flakes change from grey to white then stop,

and perimeter lights become sharp.

Snow ploughs cleared the runway, planes took off

to Amsterdam, Istanbul, Tel-Aviv –

from this terminal of ironies, with its

foreign investors and its destinations,

in this nation obsessed still with ‘racial

hygiene’ and yet in which so very much

of Eurasia has miscegenated.

We were the penultimate flight to leave.

While we taxied to the runway we saw

the last flight – for Moscow – being boarded.

As we flew west I thought of the other craft’s

rapid journey over distances

the Magyar tribes took many years to cross –

and that, beyond the broadest tract of land

untempered by the sea, the sun was rising

on the Bank of China.