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  For Aljoscha   ST LAWRENCE SEAWAY   Under my finger the map, this quiet pale blue of the cold estuary, the countless small elevations of the islands, white and pale green, they rub against my fingertip, press into the grooves and rings of the impinging skin Under the fingernail and pressed deep into the nail bed the black earth of this godforsaken strip of Middle Europe, far from any sea, any estuary, with a view to the horizon in the west and in the east to the bench by the yard gate, where Auntolga awaits the evening, I see her through the sparse branches of the young cherry tree in front of my house, she sits in the light of the late afternoon and scrapes the ground with her black laced shoes until her friends come and sit down beside her, sit there until dusk like old ravens   Auntolga scrapes with her feet and nods and nods with her raven’s head, we call out something in Serb to each other When she talks in Hungarian to her raven friends, I hardly understand a word, yet once a word flew from their beaks onto my table – Mississauga No doubt, the word had become Mississauga on its flight between Olga’s bench and the table in my room and had sounded quite different at the beginning of its trajectory, but now it was Mississauga, as on the freeway signs in the dazzling early summer light in Ontario, a quarter, a third, half of a lifetime ago? Almost still a child I found myself, together with my son of a few weeks, in a big American sedan The woman in whose house I was going to live had picked me up at the airport, she spoke a language I could not quite make out, later I understood that in her mouth a German dialect unfamiliar to me and English were engaged in an unceasing struggle, now paralysing, then again racing into each other, only occasionally, whether out of inattention or a generous mood, permitting a recognisable word in one or other language, such as