Field Day

(for Sarah Clancy)

I love a nice hotel.

I always take a face cloth.

When I go home

I put the face cloth

over my face in the bath.

I rarely think about

the Zabbaleen

in the slums of Cairo.

They work the dumps

sifting with a deft movement.

Bone here, metal here,

cloth and plastic over there.

Any food they find,

they feed it to the pigs first.

The flies swarm

making a massive halo.

The Zabbaleen sift on,

bone here, metal over there.

Soon there will be changes,

big companies will

clean up.

I put in more hot water.

I love a nice hotel

I always take a face cloth.

When I go home,

etcetera etcetera.

When they protest,

they will be washed clean

with the water cannons –

when the Zabbaleen fall back,

the flies will have a field day.