Korea.(Poem)

 
Korea 
 
   1. 
 
   They have no mandatory Italians. 
   And where are all their Turks and Greeks? 
   There are no Arabs or Somalis 
   to quietly polychrome the week. 
 
   A true homogeneity 
   can be, at times, quite hard to bear. 
   In all Seoul's subway chatter we're 
   the only Anglos on the air. 
 
   2. 
 
   The reading list is forty-four; 
   a poem each about world peace. 
   Two in three declaim Korean; 
   it looks as though there's no release. 
 
   I read my own; then stay two hours, 
   staring cross-eyed at the table, 
   remembering polyglottally 
   what happened in the Tower of Babel. 
 
   3. 
 
   Entering as foreign dollars 
   we pass some workers in the rice. 
   Arriving in a fleet of buses 
   we find the hotel vast--but nice. 
 
   The North Korean waitresses, 
   though cramped perhaps, have learned to live 
   and almost smile, from time to time, 
   inside their metanarrative. 
 
   4. 
 
   A nation of civil engineers, 
   another, classic bureaucrats, 
   sharing one peninsula, 
   singing in their sharps and flats ... 
 
   How one could transform the other! 
   Why can't they soon be friend-to-friend? 
   One could spin a web of freeways, 
   the other check at either end. 
 
   Energy and Density, 
   two words to summarise Busan; 
   streets flowing with alert Hyundais; 
   apartments done to master plan; 
 
   money to be made in lifts; 
   money to be made in cars. 
   The TV screens are wide and fiat. 
   There's not much time to check the stars. 
 
   6. 
 
   Good health is clearly relative-- 
   before you eat Korean food 
   they force you to remove your shoes 
   to share in their hygienic mood 
 
   but when the meal itself arrives, 
   resplendent on its hundred plates, 
   the chopsticks flash like civil war; 
   all need for hygiene then abates. 
 
   7. 
 
   Korean barbecues in situ 
   enforce a cultural immersion. 
   The table is awash with tastes 
   and kim-chi in a dozen versions. 
 
   The charcoal sears both beef and pork 
   and almost cooks your face as well. 
   Despite the use of little chimneys, 
   it's pretty much like Dante's Hell. 
 
   8. 
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