If you follow the silk road don’t look down or back or, to your side keep your eyes straight ahead or better still, close your eyes and let the idea, the silk road enter through your feet Do not stop to look at the woman outside that building into which her fiancé has entered disappearing between the potted saplings flanking the entrance beyond the steel maze of safety threaded with bold blue words Polis Polis Polis cartoon colouring to shade the minotaur She waits, patiently at first, before the excitement is drained and love and hope are dismembered a dream of future things hacked into little pieces the bone of marriage broken she waits outside there still unseen by the men passing her attentive only to their suitcases and the business of the world keeping the silk road smooth covering the stains with more flowing silk