Déjà Vu?

You know that blue of uniforms, the rough warm grain

of your chair, the whiteness of cups, the monochrome

pictures of celebrities on the wall, their fez and form

like portraits of dead ancestors you’ve never known

but familiar through mirrors the nose and plane

of forehead and vaguely the angle of jawbone;

and the clientèle now, greybeard political tone:

you know that.  Though neither they nor you can explain.

Of course you’ve never stepped here before, these dark wood

panelled walls, that frame of a young Umm Kulsoom!

Discussions mongrel chasing their own tail, what good

has come of all this?  a couple across the room

in a romance; smoky drapes of perhaps and could.

A hundred years; and you the conduit and continuum.