The Register
   i.m. Elio Cruz

CROSS he said at registration his name meant. Pointedly.
We got it. New class. Don’t smile till Xmas. ‘It’s Spanish; 
my home is Gibraltar but that name’s Arabic: Jabal Tariq,
or Tariq’s Mountain.’ Our Tariq turned round and smiled.

Back home, my brother Tom told me he remembered Gib
from the Navy, though he was mainly drunk ashore there.
He stopped over on the way back from Suez when he got
the silver medal he hated and his bogus Rolex he so loved.

I learned Cruz was a writer in a language of cross relations,
like song, Llanito – Andalusian Spanish base for Berber,
Menorcan Catalan, Genoese, Moroccan Sephardic Haketia,
Portuguese, Darija Arabic and more strains – their roll-call

sounded like the music of dreams. For Mister Cruz, I wrote
my first poem. More came and led to a crossroads of ways
less travelled from my council estate that his school served,
one like those where, I hear, Llanito is mainly spoken now.

Visiting mine again from university, friends there assumed
I was serving time in prison or the Navy. But I’d catch Elio
after school. In later years, I sent him my new poetry books
and, each Xmas, a rude card, designed to make him smile ...
 
                                                                               Ian Duhig


When poet Ian Duhig was a small child growing up in Paddington, ...