[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

The fair was something wicked come to town.
A ‘caravanserai’ the priest had thundered.
‘A caravanserai of wickedness’
A phrase to chew and roll around the tongue.

The travellers came with all their difference,
the smells, the words we could not understand.
Each year the same. A canvas kingdom raised
in fantasy. Scab kneed, agape, we’d gawk,
watching the muscle plaited men at work,
great wooden sledges hammering square pegs,
undoing greasy skeins of thumb-thick rope,
unfolding painted scenes rubbed raw by time,
then hauling up and lashing down the tents
so quick that knots would magically appear.
They gleamed with sweat and spilled profanity.


Shivered by fear we hovered at the edge
deliciously aware these foreign folk
were opening a portal into hell.