Aquaintance

A small clean flat in a mixed low-crime
arrondissement. White wife from
a once-Communist family.
No kids. Familiar on the metro (which
he has always disliked but accepts); in 
their local place, a two-star restaurant.
Adds numbers for a firm in La Défense.
Works well, but won’t be made department head.
Some of those numbers, elsewhere, create scenes
like those he remembers – everything possible
done to his village, parents, and sister 
before they were burnt – but he accepts that too.
(Mitterand like Reagan supported
the President. There had been, besides a tribal,
a religious difference he recalls
less often than the school he somehow reached,
after the camp, which noticed his math skills.)
He emerges, faintly, from behind a chance article.
Is someone with whom I’m in a sort of
communication – shares
my attitude towards tribes, religions,
capital, nations, though with a different tone.