Poem: Coins (2005)
(I wrote this poem in January or February 2005, after my first trip to London as an adult. It was published in Issue 6 of Smoke: a London Peculiar, July 2005. I have revised it slightly here).
Coins
(On a visit to London)
By Tolu Ogunlesi
Every beautiful city is alike, but ugly cities exist after their own distinct fashions— The Golden Rule of Travel
The first culinary commandment
of Europe, for a first time
African visitor is this:
nothing, nothing, ever tastes
as it seems.
Every bite/spoon of white
food tastes
after its own fashion,
far from the peppered
predictability of home.
You need a prophet perched
on your shoulder to tell you
what white food to pick,
and when,
and how.
Nothing is ever as it seems.
You finally absorb that lesson
when with your own eyes you see
that Peckham's really some kind of sewage
dripping quite proudly into the Thames
and that it's true your brothers
keep europe's duskdawn wheel a-grinding.
They hide behind oversized newspapers
and under no condition will they
invite you home, because there isn't any,
or better still, that mildewed flat
hasn't qualified for upgrade to home.
Much of the time, my dear
you’re like one of those machines
that litter London,
daily digesting an eternity
of coins in exchange
for every privilege
from a phone-call to a pee.
You are just like one of them, gorging
on your own version-of-coins.
Those double-decker buses would be a 5p,
and the couples who didn't hesitate
to lock lips in public, would be a ten.
The neon-irises of those shops
would be a 50p. A drunk peeing
on a late-night side-walk,
back to a queue of taxi-drivers
(one of whom is black and looks like
he'd be a Rotarian back home)
would be a one-pound.
A black lady, chubby, careful
not to be familiar with you
as she asks you to raise your feet
so she can sweep beneath
is a two-pound coin,
because it draws
the biggest response
from your mechanism.
Biggest response, so far.
Many other things would be like notes,
absolutely useless
in a discriminating coin-slot.
Like how the power never fluctuates.
which is an irony, since it ranked high
on your List
when you stepped
out of Africa.
Now you've grown
used to it, despite
having been here
only forty-eight hours.
Another time, the philosopher in you
would’ve noted how fast we adapt
and unadapt
to variations of suffering.
But not now,
the Coin-Slot is grinding hard.
Not sure what kind of currency this’d be:
the image of a police car hurtling
downtown, siren flashing;
side by side with the comment it provoked
from a white-man explaining
to a tourist inches from you,
“This is the favorite Bible
passage of the Police here:
Where two or three
blacks are gathered
there we are —
in their midst.”
*
Tolu Ogunlesi was born in 1982. He visited London recently for the first time, on his way to and from Ilfracombe, a town five hours away (from London) where he was going to visit a friend. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
