crotchet=80
a midsummer night's fair gift of airglow
fills the sky with the patience of pearls
the world's a city full of straying streets
whispered the Omniscient Mussel rocking
in a shallow phosphorescent pool
with a straw in a bottle of Tamarisk
I accept a salty green-fringed mouthful
then get back to my tale not that it's news to the O.M. –
so after 3 days throwing up in Siracusa (water poisoning – Midsummer 1980)
I catch the night-train to Agrigento [Dorian]
carrying less weight & with another page bleached clean in my head
I arrive after the last bar has closed
& wander southwards from the city
until I find a broken orchard wall:
& slept on Earth too near a goat & manger full of stars
I awoke to the silhouette of a dog facing east & sitting next to my head
stirring when I stirred but with a dogged calm
we shared Parmesan rind & stale soft crackers in the dark
as another dog ghosted in under the trees & then another
& we set off to reach the temples by dawn with a pack of 20 happy hounds
(plus Shakespeare fruit & Durrell in the bin-bag from Messina)
we arrived before first light the Temple of Concord or Demeter
[or whichever mother & daughter invented agriculture before that weeken]
temples remade by changing light in an air which held wild thyme
in years of breeze from off the sea I looked over my own shoulder
& although my view was overseen I saw enough
to leave a sense of rising small boats lifted on a long swell forever in my head
& a piano beached on the landing
what might our dying Norfolk neighbour want before the end?
we swallow a few more bitter drops
which drop into the deep dark river
that carries us away –
reassurance that the photograph is still under his pillow
his old oar still planted in the vegetable patch
a fork just smeared with red mullet stew
a tea-spoon dipped in retsina
help to reach the bedroom window
so he can look down into the garden
where his old dog sits looking the other way
Norfolk June 2007