Invasion of Portugal

by

Lois Francis

---

These tired eyes have seen it all before
invasion of aliens descending
like gaggles of honking geese
defiling the shoreline
with wrappers and styrofoam cups.
The shallow ones.

They shatter the air with laughter
and raucous chatter in barbarian tongue.
Bareheaded, bare-armed,
masked in dark glasses, they close in
snapping pictures. They flourish dollars
in raised hands, pointing and smiling,
in vain attempt to buy a lobster pot as souvenir
to display in plastic mansions
in foreign lands as sample of primitive culture —
degrading a real man's work.

---