Three Poems

Kruja

‘Skanderbeg’s town’ – and
there he is, terrible on his
plinth-top horse by the bankomat,
flanked by bee-lining stray dogs.

Where is the nearest button-shaped
Hoxha bunker? Look in be quick.
It is waist-deep in a wash
of soil and cigarette butts; and

all is as promised:

each knackered Mercedes
or Audi bucks at the corner,
throws its tails of dust
to the empty sky where

the castle tower sticks

from its clifftop, like a flexed digit.
...