INTO THE CITY AT SUNSET

Rusted path: hardened snake,

defunct narrow-gauge

through winding surf-creeks

Toyota’s speeding

crawl through eucalyptus

“sacred way”

cut into sun-slope:

grass-eyed waiting rooms

yellow-flaked

behind the white, rough-crowned city,

the mountain gulf

overturns the plains,

sky-cave of spiral

drainage of the sun

casting glens transparent,

stirring the windscreen,

tides of the sun

unbury infinite detail

shadows in pistachio

traps and deliria

tangled, running,

gaps in the orchards,

the agricultural structure,

ancient woven base

to the mountain Geraneia;

dykes and rock-barrows

waving down to Megara

from Geraneia’s wooden circuit-wall

of strawberry trees, forests,

open-air altar slabs,

straining the Toyota

through fretwork of interwoven

orchards clicking

as they move together

in the heat of summer;

insect, wicker,

dead bark shed

from the budding mountain,

Toyota playing

The Doors’ “The End”

(idols carved by trunks and shadows)

“ride the king’s highway”

at school I’d fall in love

“ride the highway west”

and by March become depressed,

May air made one malleable,

brought the scent of journeys,

bitter August, alone,

thoughts of others’ holidays

“the snake is long,

seven miles — ”

and sad foreign songs, from over the oceans,

the liquid snake-head

with death in the day-shape,

tides of the sun,

night-softening,

life melting into porous

caves of the blue

scrubbage of nightscape.

And the period of the guardian moon

after wild evening

and the streaming light of the streets subsides.

*/*/*/

*

The three Minoan girls on Naxos
dark red skin, depth like amber/ distance/
red tea of shadow and leaves
in a glass, was their skin,
slim with black-brown hair, like curling blades
black dresses, ragged folds,
round hexagonal sunglasses

Remember riding in formation in the Near East?
It was so beautiful like hinged insects
we folded in the wind
and knew instant futures

Pelt traders, cool basements,
Athens boiling brains from the feet up
crossing to Psiri, sat on the step
the man folded back from his zimmer-frame
asleep just like that,
bottle of water and tobacco laid neatly beside
like a desk

peach pulp hot on the pavement dropping
light bulbs on Kolonou burning in the day

air-conditioned zone, guarded mall in ripped city
streets lead down to a pool of leaks
a lake at the old airport, I crave red words
the ones beginning with K and ending S
such as 'Kalos', 'Knossos',
puddles of clay
'Ariadne' is a black and white word, dappled, bruised,
like the moon, left behind.

/\/\/\/

The dust filled my hair
like sea salt, I was blonde with it,

the column advanced, with fuel replenished,
the cracked fruit of the deep rocks oozing for us,

the children are uninitiated and wake wild in the night
we eat sea-fennel salt-soup my clothes are soiled
with the wind's effusions erosions
from within I am *purified*
with the grainy wind, the dirt worn in
is colouring, is only more smooth earth,
I think of you and like a shepherd
my heart plays songs in isolation, sweetness,
echoing to fill the valleys,

yet I am a protrusion in the desert, a standing reed
or bullrush and we are *all* that we were made as,
our kingdom, of sweat and eyes and white horses
leukippoi who purr, who would eat us

/your eyes like dark-edged coves glimmering
in rising heat waves, we stopped at fresh springs,
feminine bowed sippings, I went hooded like them
tracing across rocky hills with water fillets

to cradled lakes or sea-coasts
with their arms spread, the roofed downpath of mature trees
a hall of shadow
hiding tuffets of hair, loose green and curve-falling
and laden with spears; but the day blazed these tunnels,
the naked spurts within -

I followed your train, it was the sun who tore me to pieces
unabated, I was filled with love,

you were made a laurel tree,
a thousand leaves not falling apart
I saw you in the stream, spawning,
gathering the sands and forming an island.