"Heathrow? Heathrow?"

Sometimes the contours of a stranger’s face
imprint themselves, as though they map my life,
reveal coordinates of wider mysteries.

My tube pulls in to Leicester Square and through the glass
I watch a silent film: a Rabbi on the packed platform
unseen to everyone but me, holds up a scrap of paper,
carefully copied letters in a foreign tongue;
mouths his English mantra,"Heathrow? Heathrow?"
as though invoking secret names of God.

People surge around him like a tide. He a pebble,
buffeted on the beach, irrelevant to the hugeness of the ocean.
This isn’t prejudice. This is its guilty twin, indifference.
He, lonelier than a man adrift upon the sea,
knowing his insignificance under the sweeping span of stars.
"Heathrow? Heathrow? " the futile prayer of waves upon a shore.

He is beyond my reach, beyond the carriage-glass
his battered suitcase at his feet, his hat, his curls,
his wiry beard, the paper talisman which he, a scholar,
has relied on. Words are his trade, his sanctuary, as mine,
our only chart to navigate these deeps.
"Heathrow? Heathrow?" will steer us home.