Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts Old Europe (2) Adam Aitken You don’t need to queue at the entrance but then so dark your captions now unreadable since the children left. Come dine with me in a dead café. Let’s dance in my old Turkish residence lined with uncut books where a cigar accords with taste and the chocolatier snores. You may need to sidestep the urine. Rémy flew home in a djellaba the armless no glory veteran the pigeons don’t bother with the bread the accordion’s sellotaped to wheeze a tune. The Romanies sell puppies to lovesick tourists but the light is what we dream, Saron’s scything searchlight, the Eiffel Tower a blingy earring on the ear of Europa. In the courtyard of a hôtel particulier she showed me the seventeenth century rainwashed and dishabille with a horse in harness and a Russian lover who won’t spy for money or love. A warning: the shih tzu twins are locked in patrolling my millionaire terrace, the road a crime scene below, a day-for-night with Citroen and café shoot-out. You might have to step over the body. I only come here for a summer for language, macaroons, delicious cod. Good thing Cheryl got the handbag she wanted she’s so persistent we filmed it. Adam Aitken Adam Aitken has published four main collections of poetry and other pamphlets. His latest is Eighth Habitation (Giramondo Publishing). He teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney. More by Adam Aitken › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.