The Phoenicians

From wilderness they came the ocean’s Bedouin,

Their vessels indomitable camels saddled,

The watery wastes their pasture and delight,

Roaming far from cities’ clenched fists,

Their liberty in impermanence, in perpetual motion,

the night sky their flickering compass and dream.

They arrive, do there business, disappear again,

A voluble people, with thin canny features,

Trading wares found only in their ships’ holds,

Hinting at shores no mere Greek ever trod;

And many an Athenian captain’s cry of discovery

Dies on his lips as a rounds a newfound headland,

Only to find the Phoenicians there before him.


Their hooded agents stand behind the throne

Of Egypt, and mingle at the highest courts,

Whispering in the ears of Eastern kings.

Even Alexander’s eyes are dark with envy

At these mysterious seafowl gliding, untouchable,

In their element, masters of infinite chance.

Yes, he, Alexander, will break their proud wings

And forbid them, cast the back onto land

In abjection, drain the ocean from under them,

Laughing to see them marooned, undone!

There shall be no demi-gods but he alone!


Who, frittering sand through superstitious fingers,

Riddles the riddle of glass? You Lebanese mages

Inexplicably turn the sombre into light.

Little murex shells plucked from shallows

Are milked with tender cunning for their secret

Splendour-that stately purple cloth that lies

Nonchalantly on monarchs’ and senators’ shoulders.

Cockleshell boats cast off into the chartless,

Caulked and buoyed audaciously, risking all

On the wind’s evil eye, the sailors striking

Bargains with the gods, from dawn to dawn.


Jezebel Phoenicia- Europe astride the white bull;

Aphrodite’s bare feet on the sands of Paphos,

As she wades ashore, out of the shimmering East...

Hawk nosed Adonis, that pungent brown Semite,

Is smelted and recast in foreign climes;

Dionysus, dragon in a bubbling chalice,

Breathes fire into Crete and Hellas,

Beer-bibbers’ nemesis, man-shaped vine...


Aleph, beth, daleth...ox’s head, house, door...

Merchants’ tally, the sea’s exclamations,

Crane-wings’ casual genius on the air!

Notches in the tongue bespeak the tempest,

History’s roaring assaults and weird lulls,

The longing for a firm and bounteous shore...