European Union

At first it might have been coincidence

that we heard so many car horns

shifting through the Doppler effect,

or checked in at hotels where girls

in Sunday best held hands and sang

interminable folk tunes.

Only, the following day, new couples

emerged from a scaffolded church

with candles lit, and family groups

assembled in a park for photographs

where filigree blossom coincidentally

obscured the Stalinist backdrop.

Thirty, forty weddings eased

from municipal ceremonies to pose

beneath late-flowering cherry trees,

anticipated pleasures, and advice

they’d hardly need, being of an age

when all has seemed so changed.

Such innocence again around the square,

these brand new starts, this expectation,

Romanian sunlight on dove-grey dresses. 

Tom Phillips

From Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012)