Worlds apart

by John Short

Sabadell, Catalonia

In the streets and parks
West Africans drag hijacked
shopping carts, collecting scrap
to be conjured into cash.
Trinket sellers press tiny
toys to reluctant palms
for change when hard sell fails.

Men outside a local bar,
professionally unemployed;
coarse voiced with cigarettes
and beers that persist all day
enact their usual theatrics.
An old woman, darkly dressed
appears at times to linger
on the corner like a lost soul

but take the morning bus
and fifteen minutes north
on wealth-sprinkled hillsides
you’ll chance the curious domain
of bankers, footballers, actors
anonymous in mansions upheld
by rented staff and gardeners
trimming perfect hedges.