I still dream of their tiny, starved faces in Rio
huddled together in a frightened procession 
underneath white plastic sheets in dirt fled streets
and kicked wildly into the back of piss stained vans.

Bus journeys and hiding underneath seats
when bullets laced the bus whenever
it stopped for a few seconds longer
than it should have in the wrong neighbourhood.

Parties across the coastline of Sao Paulo 
where I worked at a bar for two weeks
barely able to speak a word of Portuguese
and sleeping little more than two hours a night.

I still dream of Brazil losing myself in memories
splashing away in a white tinted ocean at midnight
over twenty years after I left the sentinels of poverty
tethered to trees to the endless beaches. 

Across autumn fields brushed in burnt grass
and sudden violence like sequined light
smearing the beauty into darkness
and the ghosts in the vans into negatives. "

(From my third poetry book 'The Birth of Autumn')