('But now I live on a sorrowful planet'
						Frida Kahlo) 
				

I should have worked as a porter in a remote hotel 
or at the night-desk of a dour metropolitan hospital 
I should have driven lorries before dawn down the 
    arteries of a weeping city 
I should have handled tube trains into stations like 
 squealing pigs 
I should have worked in a laundry or navvied it as 
	   the foreman of a brickies' troupe, 
I should have been a laughter-clown or trapezed my  
          life up your wide sistering streets.  
Ah, but for now I just live on a sorrowful planet ! 
I should have got up before dawn and gone to the 
	mosque, to the women's entrance, 
			being a woman, 
I should have portered in hospitals or given singing 
		lessons in Oncology, 
I should have run backwards up moorland meadows 
	and gone raving over the blackberry
				hill, 
I should have closed my eyes in the face of oncoming
		tides, in the face of the patinas of 
				'no', 
I should have tautened my nerves on the rage of 
			exhausted ligaments, 
I should have belly-danced under g-nomes or taken 
    the cholesterol count of stem cells.      
I should have looked at myself in the eyes of a monkey, 
			in the eyes of a dog, 
I should have tied yellow ribbons on walnut branches, 
I should have let myself collapse in the apricot valleys 
			of the highest sierras Ð 
Ah, but I did none of these things, I painted the sun 
     as source of all energies, the rampant goddess
	as swirl of life, the dog of my dreams, 
	          the snake of all breath ...