Exile

You can tell by the walls

whoever lives here doesn’t

want to be seen. Thieves

know when to leave,

brick by brick they take

apart castles and rebuild

them elsewhere, in Rio,

in sunny Seychelles,

along the Dalmatian coast,

they buy up ancient flats

in Paris and Rome,

Buenos Aires and

here, in a leafy Outer

London village once given

to Hugh de Neville by

the king. Birthplace

of John Galsworthy—surely

he knew an exile or two,

in need of safety for the few.

Now if you want a walled compound

for twenty thousand a month it’s

your borough of choice. Saddam

Hussein’s daughter owned

a bungalow along Golf Club

Drive once. Did her father

ever drop in? Did the family

saunter into the Iraqi food

store, where refugees

and their onetime

persecutors shop side

by side? Or maybe

the ex–party heads don’t shop,

just as it wasn’t their fingers

rivering millions through

Swiss accounts and keypad-

access private banks.

Amazing, how finely tuned the

ears of real power are to

the winds of danger.

The bags, when grabbed,

have been packed a long time,

then the so-called looting begins—

on the evening news:

statues, empty palaces.

As if the fixtures are

worth anything. As if the real

wealth hasn’t already been

lifted and stashed long ago where it has been

for centuries: right in the open

at the empire’s center.