I wrote the following poem 46 years ago in September, 1970. I have never presented it before, but do so now having re-visited yesterday and tidied up a little [no more, really, then correcting some errors]. It is personally interesting for a number of reasons: it is a poem I recited/composed into a cassette tape recorder and later transcribed; it is during a brief period of living in Oakland, Iowa, as I was waiting to return to the UK to study, not realising then I would stay in England for the rest of my life; I remember precisely the time as it is just a few days after Jimi Hendrix died; my experience of dislocation and anxiety is the result of previously living, very briefly, in a small town in Michigan where I encountered such direct redneck hatred for me – because I had the beginnings of long hair [!] – that I decided to definitely leave the USA; it reminds me in a palpable way, though the poem does not address that Michigan experience, of the same redneck stupidity and hatred I have experienced more recently and which was and is so evident in this post-Trump election period, and finally because it captures a simple style of writing I have tried ever since to acquire and maintain, though this long paragraph would suggest otherwise,