Venice

Caught between sirocco and bora,
My mind sinks as the flood rises.
The seahorse on the gondola’s side
Leads me like a totem.
Time sports
Like a masked Carnival stiltwalker,
Racing around the streets,
Bestriding the canals,
Putting the evil eye on the Lilliputians below.
All I have is words,
The glassblower breathing into his creation,
Infusing it with his soul.

Venice in late autumn:
Sun bleeding through early morning mist,
Reminding you of everything
Beautiful, lost.
I am here among the chimeras,
The dominoed figures in Guardi’s pictures,
Dancing at the carnival of the dead.
Grotesque carved heads stare down at you from buildings,
Eyes following wherever you go:
Giants, crones, Amazons, monsters,
Hedonists winking lewdly at some scabrous gag.

The architect’s lyre
Conjures stones into position,
In accordance with the laws of the universe.
Everything is in its place,
The square, the circle and the cross,
Blessed by the number, Six.

In me both Titian and Tintoretto,
Devout in the world, caressing the opulence divine,
Supping from an onyx chalice.
In me the spoils of Constantinople, and of Heaven.
Always this melancholy sensuality,
Voluptuous void of blasé enchantments.

The nuns of San Zaccaria, in silks and satins,
Shamelessly entertained lovers,
Danced all night to trumpets and fifes,
And fought off officials sent to close their parlour
With a barrage of sticks and stones.
The priest-confessor of the Convertite convent,
Treated the four hundred nuns as his seraglio,
Arranging naked bathing parties for the novices,
And taking the prettiest into his bed,
Torturing any who would not submit.

Coruscations of light reflected from water
On the underside of bridges,
Flickering undulating patterns
Of light and shade,
Sibilant dialect of light.

Pietro Aretino earns a good living
From outrageous flattery and pitiless satire,
Attacking only those who could do him no harm,
Especially the loose wives of minor patricians,
And the rulers of other states ;
He surveys the scene, smacking his lips,
Decrying the wanton lechery all around.

On the Ponte di Santa Fosca,
Fra Paolo Scarpi was ambushed one night,
Stabbed and left for dead by Papal assassins,
For condemning the Vatican’s territorial ambitions
And defying its interdicts.
He showed that a man could love God
While opposing His Church;
The scalpel and the telescope
Fit his hand as truly as the chalice.

The light, full of reflections,
Inflections of a phantom lingua franca…
Makes the solid insubstantial,
Phantasmal, fantastical,
Silks, satins, brocades and damasks,
And the skull beneath the carnival mask.

In the church of San Zaccaria,
Look up at the Bellini altarpiece midway up the nave,
When the sun is high in the afternoon,
And a single ray enters
Through the clerestory windows across the nave
And, as it moves picks out each of the vivid robes
Of the saints and the Madonna in turn,
The colours igniting in succession.

Carpaccio’s Saint George Fighting the Dragon,
Commissioned by the Dalmatian brothers,
Glows in the Scuola’s gloom:
Fantastic colours of a Libya the artist had never seen,
The buildings in the background
Copied from woodblock prints,
And the desert strewn with dismembered bodies,
Animal skulls and lizards,
While St George spears the winged dragon through the mouth,
And the watching princess clasps her hands in gratitude.

After dark I stroll the calli and campi,
Footsteps ring on damp stones,
Nearing and fading,
Hushed by water’s susurration,
And the plash of a gondola’s oar somewhere.
Silhouetted bridges loom,
Light falls in hints from rooms above…
Kinesis is my vocation,
Moving, swirling, doubling back on myself,
Meeting the same thing again and again,
In a different mood, a different mode,
In the land of shapeshifters,
Making eerie music…

The Death of Archimedes

First, the announcement
Of some incredible measurement to come;
Then the accumulation of evidence,
Seemingly irrelevant, unconnected;
And finally the revelation, the proof,
All the details coalescing
Into diagrams on sand.

The elegant surprise will lead you home,
Part of the mathematics of infinity
That you live each hour, each day.
All men die,
And all men leave something behind.

Love is the quarry, always,
Though hunted under different names;
Wars come and go, states rise and fall,
Cities are stormed, and some taken.
Art and science
Hazard their own approximations
To the cosmos, to beauty.

To tantalise and baffle the unworthy
Yet draw the adept on;
Such is the calculus.
Entering the world,
You have entered the puzzle of puzzles,
Bound to hyperbolas, parabolas and ellipses.

Hoaxes and enigmas
Become you, Archimedes;
Beauty’s play is the joy we all reach for.
The sphere enclosed in a cylinder
Marks your tomb.

Saint Pontius Pilate

I

Pilate goes to the tomb,
Though the Jews tell him it is not proper,
And why should he cause such horror
On account of some insignificant corpse?
But, disconsolate, desperate, trembling,
Thinking of the evil injustice he has done,
The Roman governor kneels and prays
For the resurrection of Christ,
And as he stretches his hands over the tomb,
A voice comes from inside,
From the mouth of the dead:
“Roll away the stone, my Lord Pilate,
That I may come out in the power of my lord Jesus Christ.”
And when he rolls away the stone,
He sees the dead man has gone,
Leaving only his winding cloth,
Exuding the sweetest fragrance and joy,
And there he stood in rapture and amazement,
And turning to the Jews he says:
“Don’t you see how
It smells and is so beautiful,
The fragrance of that linen cloth,
And is not like the smell of the dead,
But like the fine purple of kings’ robes?”
The Jews therefore say to him,
“You yourself know how Joseph
Put spice on him, and incense,
And rubbed him with myrrh and aloes,
And that is why they smell fragrant.”
And Pilate said, “Why then does the whole sepulchre
Seem full of musk and spices,
So warm and fragrant?”
And they replied, “That is the perfume of the garden,
Which the wind blows into the tomb.”
But he stood beneath the branches,
With the breeze on his face,
And did not believe them.

I believe
That you have risen
And have appeared to me,
And that you will not judge me,
Oh my Lord, because I acted
For you,
Fearing this
From the Jews.
And it is not that I
Deny your resurrection, oh
My Lord. I believe
In your word and in the
Mighty works you wrought
Among them when you
Were alive, you raised
Many dead.
Therefore, oh my God,
Be not angry with me…

II

His ancestors were the Samnite mountain people,
Warriors and farmers, scratching at the stony ground,
Hearing the gods among the oak groves,
Until they rose against their Roman masters,
And were crushed, and scattered on the wind,
Their villages lit like victory torches,
And though they became Roman citizens,
They were mocked as rustic buffoons.
Yet the tribe of Pontii were nobles,and men of legend,
Who drew the sword in freedom’s cause,
And won great victories against the odds,
Magnanimous in victory, and honourable in defeat,
Holding life in their hands, like a quivering javelin,
Hefted and aimed straight and true, to hit the mark.
Pilate was born to the knight’s bold gambit,
Coveting the purple-bordered toga, the luxurious villa,
To be borne through the streets in a fine litter,
Receiving the honour and rewards of a noble clan;
Thus he made his way, with relentless ambition,
Courting and flattering rich and powerful men,
Learning soft manners and speech,
Running errands for his patron, whatever he was asked,
And building his muscles in the gym, with friends,
Panting after mistresses, and sharing the same whores.
And,then, there was the army, the coveted commission ,
And years abroad, in camps, as tribune and prefect,
In slack times, forgetful of authority, order and respect,
The army a disgraceful shambles, and the pay not good,
Living on porridge and sour wine,
Singing ditties about Julius Caesar:
Guess who’s spent your money on many a Gallic whore?
He’s used up every penny, and he’s coming to borrow more!
He rode out with the legions in wars of conquest,
Eagle standards flashing in the sun, and medals clinking,
Teaching the smelly barbarians a lesson,
With the blessings of the gods.
Back in Rome, he petitioned for recognition and reward,
And bagged a position in the Praetorian Guard,
Pledging his life to the Emperor, with the famous in arms;
How far he had climbed, the upstart, in heaven’s favour!
And then ,at last, after all his efforts, all those dawn visits
To his patron’s house, clutching petitions to the Emperor,
Crowding onto the couch in the hall with all the others,
The longed-for promotion came:-he, prefect of Judea!
With him he took his bride, beautiful and spirited Procula,
Fresh from the garlands and confetti, the voices and flutes
Joined in the bridal hymn, and the pitch-pine torches
Casting light on the dark chamber’s myrtle-strewn bed.

III

He sits in judgment on a gilded curule chair in his palace,
In fine white toga, elaborately draped,
Imperious and handsome, straight-nosed and noble-browed,
Clean-shaven, well-groomed and pomaded,
Though paunchy from drinking too much,
And his shrewd eyes somehow melancholy.
Stumblingly, he forces himself to speak Greek,
Too proud and suspicious to use interpreters,
Though he scorns that effeminate tongue,
So ill-suited to a superior man of action.
Briskly he sentences thieves and bandits
To crucifixion;thus,order is maintained.
No time for philosophical reflection, no time
For diplomacy: his mission is to rule,
To serve the Emperor,-no, to impress Him,-
So fools, troublemakers, subversives,-beware!
Government is the application of cunning;
And so it must be, in a troublesome province,
Among insolent barbarians, enemies of Rome,
Idle, backward, superstitious and corrupt,
Their greedy priests’ mouths needing to be stuffed
With bribes;-how dare this race of slaves
Consider themselves God’s chosen people,
Superior to Rome. Well, he will show them!
He will make them bow down before the standards
Of his meagre garrison,and praise the name
Of Tiberius,saviour and master of the world!
At night he lies beside the incomparable Procula,
Besotted with her beauty, and while she sleeps
He reads pocket cribs of famous philosophers
To show off his erudition with fancy quotations
When next he meets some suave ambassador.
He must prove himself worthy of her love!
Ambitious and strong-willed, she builds him up
And strengthens his hand, when he wavers.

IV

One day he will win true military glory-
Yes, prove his genus for strategy, leading an army
Into battle,-instead of all this paltry bureaucracy,
Collecting taxes and promoting trade.
In Caesarea,at least,the governor
Can almost forget that he is in Judea,
Feeling safe, and near to home,
Gazing out from the dazzling white palace,
Watching ships take sail for Rome.
Pilate strolls out by the water in the evenings,
Along the majestic promenade,
Smelling the ozone tang, with the wind in his hair,
And at Caesar’s temple, offering sacrifice,
He raises his eyes to the statues of Augustus and Roma.
At the circus, revelling in the crowd’s acclaim,
And hollering on his favourite racing team,
There, for a while, he is happy.
How he hates returning to Jerusalem,
At Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles,
Taking up residence again in Herod’s hill palace;
Among columns of coloured marble
And glittering fountains fly white doves,
And,on mosaic pavements of agate and lapis lazuli,
Under high ceilings painted with gold and vermilion,
In vast rooms furnished with gold,silver and jewels,
He paces,and plots his next show of power.
Gazing down from the terrace
At the Jews’ despicable hovels, he curses them all,
Offended by their foreign reek.
Accursed land of mavericks, prophets, and rabble-rousers,
Fomenting discontent in the streets!
Like scorpions he will crush them underfoot,
And bury them in their thorny brown desert!
Day after day, he dictates, scans, signs and seals his reports,
Pacing the room with hands behind his back,
As his secretary writes down his words;
Painfully, he searches for the ideal phrases,
To justify,conceal,and cast himself in a flattering light,
Laying on the sycophancy without stint;
A most delicate business, for who can say
What Tiberius wants to hear,
So distant and inscrutable is His Majesty,
And to offend him or arouse his suspicion means death;
None can ever be sure of his favour.
The missive sealed, he instructs the messenger
To make sure the emperor is smiling and relaxed
Before handing the letter to the Praetorian Guard.
And let the news get back to Tiberius
How extravagantly he is honoured in Judea,
That buildings are being dedicated to him,
Public prayers regularly offered up for him,
And his birthdays unfailingly celebrated
With ceremonies and parades of troops.
How dare the Semites defy his wisdom
When he raises imperial standards on the walls
And depicts Roman rites on the coinage?
Ungrateful scum,they even riot
When he tries to improve their wretched lives
With an aqueduct across the desert!
What business is it of theirs,if he uses
The Temple treasure as he sees fit?
Well, then, let them bleed,the fools,
And go to their Jehovah without delay!
If martyrdom is what they want,let them have it.

V

From time to time, he takes the auspices himself,
Observes the warm entrails, the flight of birds
And the regions of the sky, seeking the gods’ plans
He severs the sacrificial animal’s throat,
Watches as the blood flows, scarlet on white,
Staining his own robes,his skin;
He keeps lists of portents, and oddities arising
Anywhere in the province,
And studies the stars at night for ominous alignments.
Why had he been sent here, to this godforsaken place?
What did Fate intend for him?
Sometimes, at night, strange dreams visit him,
And sudden longings disturb the day’s work;
All the time the stars are moving to their fateful alignment,
On the day of the spring equinox,
When the sun passes the great celestial cross,
The day when the god dies, to be reborn after three days,
Sol Invictus,conquering the heavens.

Salutation to thy brows, frontiers of thine eyes; like an ocean
Whose sand in its depths is a mirror of the secret mystery.
Oh Pilate, salutation to thy breath, exhaling faith,
And thy throat, open to the taste of the gospel;
Salutation to thy breast, treasure of deep understanding,
Salutation to the nails of thy hands,
Salutation to thy heart, full of righteous love,
And to thy kidneys, torrents of water;
Salutation to thy internal organs, and to thy navel;
Salutation to the soles of thy feet, set on the earth,
And to the toes, branches of cedar,
Oh Pilate, the thunder of thy hymn over the mountains in the month of thy feast in the season of rains
Is heard from the heavens of men’s tongues, and now let the trumpets sound, bright with the blue-green sea…

Earth Energies

Fire-serpents weave across the land:
We carve cupmarks into standing stones
To amplify their power,
And the force penetrates in waves,
Shoves trees and plants upward,
Pulses in animals’ veins,
Spirals everywhere.

I walk through lightning,
Through electricity and geomagnetism,
Transmitting and receiving.
Excitotoxins flare in the brain:
My hairs rise, lips and toes tingle,
I see, smell, touch, taste and hear like a god,
Magnetosomes dance in my brain,
Thymus, lungs, spleen, liver and ethmoid sinus,
And in the haem;
The pineal, the hypothalamus,
Ammon’s Horn in the hippocampus,
The limbic system
All vibrate.

I dowse and witch across the land
With drakes and pucks,
And mark the barrows over hidden springs where cattle gather,
Hares make their forms and blackcocks court
And, in caves, I hear all the sounds from around,
Concentrated into eldritch music…
And, out of a hissing moaning well, rises a pillar of light.
See, a huge circle of blackbirds sit,
All facing inward to the centre,
Where another bird holds court;
And sheep all circle a field together,
Slowly, in unison, driven by the same urge.

Aquifers glow electric under Wessex chalk,
And geodetic stress lines shift
In sympathy with the tectonic earth,
Evoking holy fire.
Overnight, like music, the mandalas appear,
In fields of wheat, corn, oats and rape,
Among sunflowers or potates, snow, ice or sand,
Soul-code, elegant and precise,
Pictograms, fractals and stellar configurations
Sudden and ancestral as hill figures and stone circles,
Traced by sacred geometry.
A shimmering shrieking whirlwind like a mist
Appears over a cornfield,
And a spiral forms suddenly, growing outwards from the centre.
Inside the circle, healing powers lay hands
Upon you, lift you off the ground,
Staring into wonder and enchantment
As weird sounds sway you,
Out of body, out of time;
Else, madness takes you by the throat
And evil spirits play havoc,
Revelling in dread and desperation
As horrible memories turn you inside-out
And panicked birds swoon away.
Deep resonances hold you:
The heated glands alchemize,
Energy pours out of the head and hands,
You cannot think, cannot sleep, cannot function,
But perhaps this is the invisible door
Through which the watchful earth is urging you
To pass into the Otherworld.

Ile de France

Andre Le Nôtre paces out palace domains
With calm precision, laying out avenues,
Long perspectives, and massive terraces,
Giant flights of steps, parterres with fountains
And cascades, canals and lakes reflecting
Marble statuary.A measured otherworld.

Desolate Versailles, denuded shell!
The Galerie des Glaces hoards distorted shadows,
All fairytale dazzle and distant echoes
Of pomp and revelry under crystal chandeliers.
Obsolete allegories run riot on ceilings;
Gone all those courtiers who gambled a heaven
And lost to the Devil on the turn of a card,
A stilted world chopped up and fed to the dogs.
The Sun King, lifting the chalice in unjust hands,
Transubstantiated his days into High Mass,
Not ,at first, tasting the poison in the wine.

High under the roofs, nesting like a pigeon,
Louis Quinze secretes a maze of little cabinets,
Linked by narrow galleries and winding stairs,
A bourgeois sanctuary, free of ceremony,
Where he can shed those awkward regal airs,
Hosting cosy suppers for a few select friends.
In the Cabinet de la Pendule, each New Year,
Boyishly thrilled, the king watches and waits
Till midnight, as the planets dance
Inside the crystal sphere atop the clock.

After the Revolution, Louis the Eighteenth,
Returned,a lone survivor, to Versailles,
A wistful old man revisiting old scenes ,
Tottering, supported on his servant’s arms
Upstairs to his old apartments;there he sat,
In an antique chair,alone with memories,
Seeing it all as it had been in his youth.

At Marly only garden vestiges remain,
Fine trees, and scattered statues, or the relict
Of some ornamental piece d’eau.
Here Louis Quatorze would find seclusion,
His carriage turning in through the gates
And descending the royal avenue;
There, ahead, the chateau appeared,
Majestic vision, to dazzle jaded eyes,
But only from afar-the splendid detail
Mere trompe l’oeil upon a flat facade.
At dinner, His Majesty would dispense
With etiquette, throwing bread pellets
Like a naughty boy, giving the ladies
Leave to return fire.

The Château d’Anet looms on a meander,
Made magnificent by Diane de Poitiers,
That thicknecked doublechinned troll
Whose mind beguiled a boy-king
As her fingers picked his pockets.
Inside, the radiant chapel is chaste
White stone, the dome a spiral hymn,
Its pattern mirrored in the marble floor,
As if one could almost grasp God’s riddle.

Men and women, high and low, harnessed
Themselves like oxen to the carts, hauling
Stone to Chartres, convoys trekking overland
Singing psalms, and, at night, the plain
Is constellated with their campfires.
The cathedral rose from a scaffold forest,
Till the rising sun, drunk withGod, crahed
In the stained-glass, opalescent gloom
Glows; as the eye adjusts clustered columns
Shoot up to the arch, then part and splay
Out into the vaults’ leviathan ribs,
Framing vertiginous galaxy of glass.
Rise and swim in translucent paradise,
Inexhaustible symphony composed
Of tiny everyday scenes.

At Fontainebleau, after dinner, Eugénie,
Radiant with girlish excitement, leads
The guests down to the lake, at nightfall,
The pleasure-boats drift, amid laughter
And romance; the ghost of Marie-Antoinette
Walks beside the Empress, as she expounds
The palace’s history, the stories ofthose
Who had called it home before.
Eagerly, she escorts friends on forest walks,
Tripping along, lovely head held high,
Chattering like a dreamy schoolgirl,
Trying to ignore the wolves closing in.
Already she shivers at a change in the air,
“Autumn already”, she murmurs, “so soon...”

On the last night of the fête, the courts
And terraces throng with revellers,
As the Emperor appears, a paladin,
To light the first firework with a brand;
Sudden tricolour flares blazon the sky,
Empty ecstasies of a doomed world.
A trumpet fanfare and the avenue fills
With horseback spectres, emerging
From nowhere, the Dragoons conducting
A torchlight procession. The crowds gasp
And thrill, so proud to be alive
In glorious times, France’s greatness
Restored. The next day, the restless court packs
And moves on.They will never return.

Poplar-bowered, Rousseau’s tomb rises
Like an antique altar, on the lake isle
At Ermenonville, erected by the marquis
To honour his beloved mentor.
He ordered these gardens as he ordered
His life; a rational idyll, a tableau vivant
Of happy peasants and efficient farms.
He preached the coming Revolution,
Served the people; but they imprisoned him
There, in his own home; from the window
He saw his beloved gardens laid waste
By vandals, and Rousseau’s tomb
Defiled by the state’s grave-robbers,
His sainted bones carted to the Pantheon,
To be praised by vicious hypocrites.

Montmorency in spring: primroses
Peep through snow, as Rousseau comes
Expressly to hear the first nightingale sing
In his forest cloister.Each day he rambles out
To write, excited as a truant schoolboy,
Clutching candles in glass funnels.

Rumours

Dark friend, do I have your ear?
Weird rumours ride like wyverns on the air
And sidling insinuations
Twist the gullible mind,
Fomenting panic
And pogrom.

Through this loophole
You may slip into another dimension,
A parallel universe.
The reflection is changing,
Changing all the time
In the glass.

Hearsay shivers through me,
Poetry of paradox,
What is and is not;
The third person
Swallows the quicksilver spiral
Of his own rhetoric.

What you believe, you are,
Memory’s fingersmith
Living without warranty;
The nameless witness,
Alone with a candle
In the dark and dreadful room.

Buenos Aires

You know how seductive it is,
The possibility of chaos, of catastrophe,
The spires collapsing and the grand facades just crumbling away;-
It’s all there in the newspapers each morning.
Everywhere is danger and disaster,
A city that will kill you
Slowly, malevolently.
The psychoanalysts are doing good business,
Nodding and smiling and watching the clock,
Fairy godmothers to the rich and unhappy.
In grand cafes elegant ladies drink coffee from tiny cups
While white-jacketed waiters serve patisserie with silver tongs...
Sleek women totter along the pavements in miniskirts and high heels,
Thrusting through the thick hot air,
Desperate to be thinner, fitter, more beautiful,
And rats breed faster and faster in the alleys.

The ghost of Saint Eva Perón walks the streets:
For weeks after her secret death
Her corpse was moved from house to house,
Till her guard went mad with desire for her
And ended his life wandering the streets,
Raving about his lost love.
Meanwhile, Juan’s thirteen-year-old mistress
Was parading round the house in the dead Eva’s clothes,
While the ageing dictator lounged and watched.

You are stranded here, at the edge of the world,
And ruined days turn into ruined months and years, ruined lives,
By slow torture the state will vex and oppress you
And only Creole cunning wins the day.
Nothingness surrounds you,
Immense and malign,
And sometimes you feel sure you will lose your mind
With all this fury inside you
From the living nightmares of each day,
It all feels like a horrible accident,
As the ground shifts again beneath your feet
And hurricanes charge up from Antarctica,
Turning the city upside-down.

In the tango halls the band plays songs
Of love, misery and death,
And couples dance with solemn suffering faces,
Moving fluidly across the floor, with dramatic turns
And complicated steps,
Hips and legs engaged in erotic badinage,
Upper bodies held apart in tension,
Heads touching but eyes turned away,
In brief yet tumultuous trysts.
This, from the criminals, immigrants and sailors
In the ports, the desperate yearning
For happier days long gone,
They would dance all night till dawn
Then fall to knife-fights and murders;
Such excess could only end in violence.
Around the dance floor women sit alone,
Awaiting an invitation to dance,
While the men lurk at the back, in the gloom,
Brooding as they roll the whisky round their mouths,
And with a nod of the head a man
Invites his chosen woman to dance,
And, after she grimly assents,
They meet on the dance floor briefly
Then return once more to separate tables
Not even exchanging a word.

What lives between the city and the pampa?
This was meant to be the Promised Land,
Now see it-all squandered, corrupted and betrayed,
Home to frauds and chancers,
Everything imported,
That swagger and bravado just a sham,
A cover for self-hatred and mediocrity,
This is the beggared decaying land
Of the disillusioned,
Who came here just to get rich, not to found utopia,
And loved only Europe and the faraway.

Unhappiness starts from some dark seed
Within you, grows and takes root,
And pretty soon you cannot live without it,
It is all you cherish and rely on,
And each day you awake, resigned.

The dead have no names, but they walk the streets,
The people were warned but they turned away, paid no heed,
When faces began to disappear from the streets,
Or vanished from their homes,
The young and the clever, with too many ideas,
Kidnapped into unmarked cars in front of everyone,
While everyone else turned away and sleepwalked on,
Telling themselves “there must be some good reason for it...”
With the proper training,
Public servants, skilled in bureaucratic procedure,
Learned to interrogate, torture and murder.
“First we shall kill the subversives,
Then the collaborators,and the sympathisers,
Then the indifferent; who think themselves safe,
And last of all the timid.”

Hildegard of Bingen

Rhine water’s cloister veiled her
And choired through her veins,
Sure that bone would bloom
And the crowned skull sing.
Buried alive, death’s bride,
She swallowed the medicine
Of darkness, shocked into vision
By the wandering Elohim.
Hooded love held her in silk,
And proffered dark wines
To make her fly above the hills
And vineyards, crusader-queen
Of another Jerusalem, somewhere.
Disease and madness shook
Her little frame into rapture,
The barefoot child brought
Over cold stones to the altar,
A lighted taper in each hand.
Why did others not see what she saw?
Could they not feel pure flame
Scorch through to the marrow
And visit seed upon the womb,
The Virgin’s nectared honeycomb?
At the junction of two rivers
She broke the mind’s maidenhead,
Concocting physic for the unwhole,
And wedding-feasts of sound.

Festivals

Dawn horsemen of the Common Ridings hacking round the Scottish Border fields, soldiers of tradition, drunk on rum and milk, bearing their standards high;

Madmen running with the bulls at Pamplona, in the storming terror and bedlam, chancing the horns of fate, on a flood of beer, sangria and blood;

Music galloping over the Glastonbury fields, all stars and dawns and dancing moons, while summer rains golden showers on the heads of the young;

Hogmanay crowds in Edinburgh, wild and whiskied, plunging off the cliff of midnight into the suns’ abyss, while the world goes up in fireworks;

The crazed High Mass of La Tomatina, in the brimming streets of Buñol, the red warriors bombarding each other with the sacred grenades to ecstasy and exhaustion;

The wild giants of las Fallas lurching through the fiery roar and smoke of winter’s end, spewing scathing verses, as hell releases its demons in furies of joy;

The flaming beacons, marching torches and leaping flares of Lewes Bonfire Night, as the year rolls like a burning tar barrel through the dark, and the Devil-Pope explodes in hellfire;

Oktoberfest revellers, swimming to oblivion’s Barbary shores across foaming ambrosial oceans of beer, for life is just too blonde and beautiful to bear;

Aztec ecstasies on the Day of the Dead, all the living skeletons feasting on the bread of souls, raising pyramids of sugar skulls to the sun;

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, casting miracles and signs to the mad, as beads to Indians, black messiahs damned to dance through the hurricane;

Shining brown bodies of Trinidad, carousing on waves of rum and sunfire, wallowing in the mud of sex and sound, rising to the heights of Africa;

Smoke of jasmine, incense and incense in the Kandy streets at Esala Perahera, gold silk elephants processing through the drum-storm, the Buddha’s tooth borne high in its casket;

Delirious dancers frenzying under the full moon on Hat Rin beach in Thailand, dissolving into the waves in a mushroom-cloud of love and wonder;

Holi lunatics, high on bhang, running riot across India, painting the world with vivid colours, the full moon’s bonfire showering them with white fire, with soma;

The naked star-blessed hordes of Kumbh Mela, amid the circus of gods, stampeding into the Ganges’ nectar, to cleanse their carnival lifetimes of sin;

Mongol warriors galloping and wrestling on the Naadam fields, swilling the sky’s kumiss, and singing their arrows to the target,the sun’s white banner theirs to win.

Bari

All the should-have- beens...-
what do they matter to us now?
This is what we have, what we are,
For which we must be grateful.
And, after all, we have always been
Experts in missed opportunities,
Prey to the avaricious fool
And the thieving crook.
Ruthless energy is fanatical to vent itself
In practical endeavour, to conquer
And convince the world,
And discover new Americas
Of pleasure and profit.
Here there is no melancholy,
Only strong accents of desire,
Calculating the next hectic transaction,
In this rational geometrical grid,
Without heroes or martyrs.
The scirocco and the tramontana
Trouble us equally,
The mysticism of dry stone
And the pragmatism of the sea.
Remember Joachim Murat,
Maniac of vanity,
Swaggering in his self-designed green uniform,
With golden cordons, silve ribbons
And red boots, in love with women
And horses, riding up on a white steed
To lay the foundation stone
Of the new town he had planned.
St Nicholas extends his wizard hand
To bless the sailor, the merchant and the thief,
And in the timeless souk of a moment
Life haggles over subtle advantages,
Speculating with inventive glee,
Desperate to expand, to survive.
Green oriflammes with crescent moon
Wave in the wind as Saracens
Charge on their darting Berber horses
And fire their words like arrows
Into the heart of the sun;
Thus an emirate of sphinxes
Codes its mathematics
Into the air, munificent as Allah.

Antonio Canova

Sensuous delicacy of the body,
Whose curves and countercurves
The eye’s caress can only hazard!
Absolute majesty of line
Conducts imagination to unforeseen ends...
The priestly hand takes up its tools,
Marmoreal offerings to fashion
From human perplexity.
Canny diplomat of worlds, Canova
Serves at the borders, detached
From affection, alone with the dead
And abandoned his resourceful kin.
From court to court, serving patrons
All at war with one another, the artist
Manoeuvres with modesty and grace,
His fortunes greater than their destinies.

Silent, he stands before his finished work:
The tomb of Maria Christina, in Vienna,
The dark door in the pyramid
Drawing in the endless cortège ,
Bone-white into black,
Procession we cannot but join;
Here, there is no consolation, no absolution,
Only infinite mystery to contemplate.

Through art to the existence beyond!
Unappeasable longing will have its way
With you, reveal and conceal,
Force you to the crux.
Thus Cupid gazes into Psyche’s eyes,
Embracing in unbearable suspense,
All energies converging on the focus
Between their almost-meeting lips.

Mozart's Bones

For the ceremony of human perfection,
The communion of bewildered hearts,
He must annihilate the world and himself,
And in that blessed death
Is freedom and love.
To the last year, let music ascend
Ever higher, plumb ever deeper,
Simplest and most serene.

His ear, attuned to magnificent phantoms,
Sounds the deep with infant glee;
Harlequin skips onstage and capers
In the mournful city of masked balls.
Up and down he paces in his room,
Restlessly prancing, miming, and fiddling,
Driven to and fro by dark persuasions,
Chortling maniac with nowhere to go.

This is life
Without “biographies”,
“Turning points” or “stages”,
This is life,
Inhaling and exhaling,
Knowing it must one day be no more.
Welcome to the ludicrous,
The bizarre.
Welcome to the changing moods
Of unicorns and porcupines.
This is life,
Unbearable concision and rapidity.

Poor little great little Mozart,
Death wants to shake your hand!
Your father is standing behind you,
In an undertaker’s coat.
Into the unmarked grave
Of a perfect symphony,
You go!

Only the tender can be so cruel,
And the calm so mad;
Sweet buffoon, celebrate the High Mass
Of a cackling farce,
And let the strains of divertimento
Absolve you.

Stones of Eireann

Wishing stone and cursing stone,
Stones of medicine and power,
Gloonan and bullaun,
The bedrock of Ireland
Masses in the mind.
Touch the bodies
Of gods and heroes,
Feel their blood in your veins;
Turn widdershins or deosil
To release the magic,
White or black.
The beds and thrones
Of the almighty hag
Summon the dreamer.
Navel stones of Ireland,
Swirling eggs
On pillars of fire,
Channel the force
From below.

Touch the White Stone
Of Calliagh Beri,
Indented with the fingerprints
Of warrior and goddess,
Battling lovers of Armagh,
Who hurled it at each other
During their tiffs.

In Fethard’s town wall,
In County Tipperary,
The Witch stares back,
Sheela-na-Gig,
Warding off evil
Beneath Slievenamon,
Abode of the otherworld women.

On the Hill of Uisneach
Looms the Stone of Divisions,
Fivefold Ireland’s omphalos,
Owned by the queen and her sisters,
Sign of her birth.
Earth’s head is emerging,
Midwifed by the banshee sky.

Queen Meadhbh
Stands upright in her grave,
Atop Knocknarea,
Surveying her realm
From under the cairn;
Woe to him who meets her
At the turn of seven years.

At the entrance to Neale
In Mayo’s fields,
A stone stands over
Lugh’s severed arm
That he lost here, fighting
In the Battle of Moytirra,
Driving off the Fir Bolg.

At Knockbridge, County Louth,
The Big Man’s Stone
Hefts its tilt,
Whereto doomed Cúchulainn
Strapped himself to die,
Still facing the enemy
On his feet.

Dark stone seed
In Cavan’s earth,
-The Crom Cruach!-
Once a gilded pillar,
Hub of twelve megaliths,
Till roaring Patrick
Toppled them all.

St Fiachna’s Butter Lumps
In the field next the graveyard
At Temple Feaghna,
Healing stones
Set like eggs in basins,
To be turned at Easter;
Should any fool remove them,
They would home their way
Back here.

On the Hill of Tara,
Lia Fáil stands
Sovereign granite
Sained with the oaths
Of kings, world-pillar
Clocking Ireland
With its gnomon.

Speckled Stones of Inishmurray,
Seventy in number
On their monastic altar,-
Should any man remove one,
Evil fortune will pursue him-
The fasted pilgrim
Counterclockwise turns the stones
And calls down the curse
On his foe.

St Patrick’s Stones
At Kilkerry, County Sligo,
Seven beauties
Round with power
To heal, to be turned
With prayer, and applied
To the ailing body.

At Glencolumbcille,
At June sun’s midnight,
Deosil with the stations,
Among pillars, boulders,
Flagstones and cairns,
Stone pilgrimage begins;
Pebble-bless yourself ,
And,stretched in Colmcille’s bed,
Turn clockwise and thrice;
Three stones in hand,
Three times about the well,
Marking each round
With a stone on the cairn;
Lave your feet
In the stone boat’s pool,
Sky-voyaging with the saint.

On Altadaven’s druid hill,
St Patrick’s Chair
Becomes your throne
Of secret wishes,
And in the holy well
Heal your ills.
Let wild thoughts gather
For Lughnasa,
Preaching and baptizing!

The Apparition Stones at Knock:
Can you bear to stare
Into the Virgin’s ghost?
Bless yourself
With that vision,
Palping the church wall,
And go free.

Love in Taganrog

I

Absinthe eyes peer through the blinds,
Light chequers her face.
Nineteen:
Nuptial number of sun and moon;
Gematria of Eve.
This is the citadel of winds,
The centuries’ kurgan,
With the shallow sea,
Silting up by the hour,
All desperate whispers
And rumours of Atlantis.
The south is strange doom,
Chaos of the senses.
The streets run straight down
And out into the steppe,
To the scorpion, death.

II

In the schoolhouse
Tourists look for the desk
Where young Chekhov
Once sat taciturn and snake-eyed,
Doodling satires on his teachers.
In the church
Pilgrims bend to kiss
The relics of Starets Pavel,
Who sanctified this simple town
By prayers and vigils and counsel,
A nobleman in peasant garb,
Who slept upon a bare bench.

III

Sensual deceptions of the enchanter,
Herself enchanted!
She has studied language
But needs no words,
And of philosophy she retains
Only the essence.
Lissom and half-naked
On the brilliant beach,
She dances in the fire
Like Nefertiti.

Athens and a Girl

“perfectus vero cui mundus totus exilium est”

Hugh of St Victor, Didascalion III, 20

Gimcrack city,
Restless frenzy in the veins…
I want to go back to the village
Of a single comforting thought,
The sleepy snake village where, I think, I was born.

Panayiota, yours is the casting vote,
The fatal ostrakon, a sentence of exile.

In me are the tyrant and the democrat,
Twin brothers fighting hand to hand,
Kicking, biting and stabbing in the dust…

In the ruins of the Asklepieion,
Among the cypress trees, beneath the Acropolis,
I feel myself among the sick,
Bathing in the sacred spring,
Offering sacrifice at the altar,
Then retiring to the abaton
To sleep, and let dreams heal me.

Just beneath the Odeion archaeologists
Have dug up loutrophoroi,
“Such vessels were used in wedding ceremonies,
Then dedicated in the sanctuary…”
Satyrs dance around the altar of Dionysos Eleutherios,
Singing goat-songs in competition.

Pelasgian fantasies storm the Acropolis,
Where my blue-eyed wonder walks,
Escorted by perverse spirits;
My arrogance covets Tyrian purple
And Byzantine enthronement…
Shyly, the dull little murex shell
Conjures improbable splendour !
Centaurs gallop in among the Lapiths
To trample the feast and abduct their women…
The holy serpent stirs in the Erechtheion,
Lured by honey-cakes,
Athena’s olive tree sprouts again from ashes,
The sea of Erechtheïs sounds its waves
Beneath the temple floor…
What is it the Arrhephoroi are carrying
Down the secret stair and underground passage
To the sanctuary of Aphrodite ?
Thoughts flee like murderers and runaway slaves
To the Cave of the Furies, below the Areopagos,
Seeking asylum by Oedipus’s tomb…

Panayiota, kore, what offering do you grasp
In your hand, -a pomegranate, perhaps,
Or a dove ? And your unearthly smile,
What does it betoken ? I only know
That it stirs and disturbs me
Like a whisper, like an omen.

Amid the Agora ruins, I stand,
Seduced by dim mythistory,
Easily convincing myself
That on this very spot the State Prison stood,
And in this bare remnant of a cell
Proud Socrates downed the hemlock,
With one of those small flasks discovered here…
What drives this yearning and craving
To make history solid
And earth airy dreams ?
Avid as any medieval relic-hunter,
Questing for the foreskin of Christ,
I seize on fancies and farragos,
Naming them nails of the True Cross…

At the Tower of the Winds,
-Sundial, water-clock and weathervane
Of my indefatigable Muse,
Tekke of the dervish heart
-Icall upon the eight winds to blow:
Boreas, Kaikias, Apeliotes,
Euros, Notos, Zephyros, Skiron and Lips!
Climbing up through the Plaka wynds,
Isight the Acropolis North Slope,
Where ithyphallic initiates
Raised altars to chthonic gods;
At the west end, above the Klepsydra spring,
Four caves entice the eye,
One of them perhaps the Pythion,
Where Apollo’s acolytes would wait
And watch for the lightning-bolt from Mt Parnitha
To inaugurate the procession to Delphi.
There, too, is the Cave of Pan,
Where the cult was revived
After the god’s appearance to the courier Pheidipiddes,
On his way to seek Spartan aid against the Persians in 490 B.C.

On this site - thickets blossoming
With courting couples,
And glades where stray cats live,-
Stood Plato’s Academy :
Twelve sacred olive trees grew here,
A well-watered grove with shady walks
Where the students could wander in thought,
And running tracks for the athletes,
Begging the gods to enter their limbs.
To the altar of Prometheus
Torchbearers raced,the dead at their sides,
Shadows of the tide-turning moon.
And Plato,he must, I think,have knelt here,
Powerful as a centaur,
Sketching paradigms in the ground
With his chubby finger.

Mycenaean gold masks once placed over the faces of the dead,
Silver and gold ceremonial rhyta,
An ivory lyre from a tholos tomb,
These objects I place before you, Panayiota,
If only in imagination…
Have you , I wonder, seen the Eleusis relief
In the Archaeological Museum,
Demeter handing the ears of corn to Triptolemos,
Whose mission is to distribute them to mankind,
While Persephone crowns him with a garland ?
Shall I ever with words attain the perfect simplicity
Of any Cycladic Bronze Age pot,
Shaped around emptiness,
Hoarding the air’s secret rituals ?

Lykavittos, crystal cone of light,
I climb you by steep wooded paths,
Gazing towards the sea,
And out over the ramshackle city,
And towards the distant mountains.
Somewhere on the slopes below
Aristotle and his disciples
Wandered under the Lyceum’s colonnades,
Discussing all things under the sun
While young recruits drilled on the parade ground.

Parmenides the Iatromantis

The spirit of the West, it is yours, friend, if you will fight for it,
Still there, imperishable, calling to the worthy
To abandon false comfort for higher pain.
Embrace your death before it embraces you,
For that which you miss is what really matters.

Parmenides sat down and wrote a poem,
An incantation in three parts,
Spiralling inwards, back into the darkness,
Plumbing the sounds and rhythms of being,
All oracles and riddles, hints and puns;
He had to describe for the world
His journey to the queen of the dead,
And what she had taught him
About truth and illusion.
All his life he remained a young man,
Invincible in hope and curiosity,
Sister to the unknown.

A Danish Pastry

A clean and happy place,
A place of reason-
That is all I ask.
Somewhere safe,
At peace.
This is my life,
A small plot of land,
Which I cultivate
With diligence
And pride,
Striving year on year
To increase my yield.

The mute swan’s poise
Lures my powers to achievement,
The graylag goose
Mates with my silence.
Out on the dunes and marshland
And tidal flats,
I meet my sea-self, changing.

Clarity!-(Pure white dazzle
Of Sankt Knuds cathedral in Odense,
And superb lines of design
In the simplest object)-
The dragonheaded Viking ship
Wings over waves
To raid the shores of night.

Stone and water
Are my words, my breath:
The furrows of ripples,
The reflected world,
I sow with dreams.
All is silver artifice,
Like Tycho Brahe’s nose.

In Kronborg Slot
Hamlet paces corridors
Of shadow, and, playing
Chess with phantoms,
Puzzles over chequered floors.
Everything is too real,
Like a Dutch still-life.

The Dordogne

Twists and turns
Of the Périgueux wynds,
Dank sunless passages,
Alleys and turrets,
Courtyards with exquisite stairs,
Moulded doorways and ancient corbels,
Balconies and elegant steps,
And everywhere the salamander,
And on a staircase in the Rue du Plantier
Adam and Eve stand carved,
Eating of the Tree of Knowledge,
While the serpent peeps out at them,
Tail curled round the tree trunk.

This is the land Sir Lancelot in exile
Divided as spoils among his loyal knights.
The land of Fournier-Sarlovèze,
Greatest and most ferocious of warriors,
Who, during the war in Spain,
Rode into Salamanca Cathedral on his charger,
Galloping right up to the choir;
He broke into a barricaded convent
And astonished the terrified nuns
By bellowing the Holy Office in stentorian voice;
In Russia he charged five thousand Cossacks
With just eight hundred men.

As the panting sow, lusting after truffles,
Can smell the black root’s aroma
When it ripens in November,
And infallibly dig it up,
So can I scent poems in the air.

No need have I of any philosophy
Save the wisdom of wine:
To taste a single year in time,
Fruit of the suffering earth
As stars and people fall into oblivion.
What alchemy is this, extracting
Nectar, elixir,
From the darkness in the vine?



The church in Saint-Amand-de-Coly
Its west tower monstrous and foreboding,
A fortress of the damned;
Inside, the medieval monks and villagers,
Surviving in constant dread
Of sudden attack and destruction,
Sought refuge from attackers,
Climbing ever higher to defend themselves,
There are secret staircases
And hollow pillars
Where they hid.

In the church at Thiviers
The carvings on the capitals
Show monsters attacking human beings
Who cling desperately to coiled branches,
Other men try to ride on the monsters’ backs
Or flee from them in terror.
Force-fed like a goose
Whose liver will end as foie gras,
My mind, stuffed with visions,
And raised in the dark,
Swells to bursting.

In the Priory of St-Julien at Cénac
On the exterior of the apse is carved
A man presenting his bare arse,
To repel evil spirits;
Further round, up high, we spy
A naked couple, lewdly embracing;
Inside the church
Lazarus is raised from the tomb
While watching women hold their noses;
Men and women dance naked
While a man beats a drum;
A snake between two naked women
Castigates the sin of lust;
A pig devours two human heads.

On the Lascaux cave wall
A man is falling backwards, dead, yet ithyphallic,-
Wounded into trance-like power,
With the stillness of absolute vision-
Dropping his bird-headed wand,
Between two wounded beasts;
One of them, a rhinoceros, limps away.
The other, a bison, bristles, enraged,
Her bowels hanging out
Gravid beneath her,
A spear stuck in her,
Very near the vulva.
Yet she seems indifferent, invincible.
And the earth is blissom,
Regenerated in death,
Out of the hunger
For meat and sex.

At Brantôme, I muse
On Pierre de Bourdeilles and his scurrilous pen,
Writing with relish of “Les Femmes Galantes”,
Lay abbot of the town, on his island,
Blessed by the bones of St Sicaire;
A Gascon soldier of fortune,
Crippled by a fall from his horse,
Bitter that this paltry abbacy
Was his only reward for serving the Catholic cause,
He brooded here, bitter and broken,
Scribbling his memoirs with fantastic scorn,
Unsoothed by the clear gentle river,
Or his rose garden’s scent.

Deep inside the Rouffignac cave
The roof of a low wide hall is covered
With profusion of horses, in brown and black,
Galloping, grazing, standing startled,
Running into each other and away,
Superimposed on one another,
Frenzy of hand and eye and heart.

At Hautefort I hear the voice of Bertran de Born,
Volleying crossbow bolts of political satire,
Praising war and mocking his foes...
Nothing could keep him from meddling in poisonous feuds,
And joining the wastrel Prince Henri’s rebellion,
Ravishing the countryside,
Even sacking the Virgin’s shrine-
The mad prince died for his sacrilege,
And here at Hautefort,the troubadour
Surrendered to the vengeful king.
Condemned to death by Henry II,
Wily Bertran asked first to sing a plaint he had composed
For the king’s dead son,
And so moved Henry with his singing
That His Majesty pardoned him and spared his life,
And so the wicked troubadour rode away,triumphant,
Seeking fresh mischief and adventure,
Till age and conscience found him out
And he ended his days on a monk’s bed of ashes.

At seven-shrined Rocamadour, high above the gorge,
The Black Virgin stands on the altar,
Candle-haloed in the gloom,
Dark countenance bestowing
A proud secret smile, beyond comprehension,
Her direct gaze piercing into the other world,
Amused by her own inexplicable power.

The church frieze at Assier
Exalts the sacraments of artillery,
That made the fortune of Galiot de Genouillac:
See-guns being hauled into battle
And cities under siege,
The awesome creativity of war.
Inside, the armourer’s likeness lords over his tomb,
Posing nonchalantly with a cannon,
Vaunting his own glory in the eyes of God,
Certain that his good repute promised immortality.

Limestone country of the Dordogne,
The rock white, amber, pink, purple and grey,
Burning with ethereal fire at sunset!
Each riverbend reconfigures the perspective,
Reflection on reflection, high and low married
With iridescent harmony and love.
Gorse and broom light the hillsides,
Blue scillas in the fields, white narcissi, cowslips,
Gentians, rock-roses, marguerites, and columbines...
Lost to the senseless world,
I sit and watch fish rise in the clear water,
While a nightingale sings in the chestnut tree above.

Anna/ Anastasia

Anna Anderson, died 1984

Grand Duchess of a lost day,
Of the sunlight in birch woods
And snowdrifts of imperial words…
My name is Anastasia,
My father was the King of Shambhala.
History: an illness of the blood,
A Fabergé egg,
Containing forbidden Easters.
I am a guest here,
In this haunted house,
This memory palace;
Like Caspar Hauser,
Like the Man in the Iron Mask.
What is this curse upon me
That brings grief and pain
To all around?
You will kiss my hand
And bow to the Queen of the Dead.
My every command you will fulfil.
Papa, look, I have made you a snowman
Out of tears.

Athenian Interlude

“With a fortunate shot on a powder-store,
An inextinguishable fire spread this way and that,
Demolishing the houses through two whole days,
Causing the enemy considerable damage
And grievous affliction.
Thus the greatly famed and celebrated fortress of Athens
Has fallen under the sway
Of Your Serenity’s domination.”
Such was the proud dispatch sent by Captain-General Morosini
To the Venetian Senate,
After his forces had bombarded the Parthenon.

In the Acropolis Museum,
I stand before a kòre
Sculpted by Antenor,
Exquisite, enigmatic,
The serene beatific smile
On those silent lips,
Extending her hand
To offer a pomegranate.

Acropolis-side,
On a cypress terrace,
Asclepion’s scant ruins...
Here sufferers would sacrifice to the god,
Bathe in the sacred spring,
And sleep, praying for therapeutic dreams.
O, staff of Asclepius, two serpents winding round,
Draw out evil from the wound,
As doctors would extract a guinea worm
By cutting slits in the patient’s skin
Then coiling the parasite round a stick.

Ambling past kiosks selling postcards
Of sexual intercourse in the ancient world,
I look up and behold a billboard
Advertising Olympic Airways:
MAKE THE MILES YOU TRAVEL EARN FOR YOU!
JOIN THE ICARUS FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAM!

Down in the metro station,
A giant advertisement on the wall:
A tanned female bottom, smooth as a statue’s,
Proclaiming the benefits of depilation.
Around the walls glass cases display
Discoveries from the excavations,
The skeleton of a man.

Ambling through the Plaka,
I imagine the vanished Theseion,
Where the King’s bones, recovered
From Skyros, were interred,
Its walls frescoed with his feats,
Battles with Amazons and Centaurs.
Am I not still that boy
Who first thrilled, so long ago,
To the tales of gods and heroes,
Sailing ever since by those stars?

Dry bone of a city,
Where now your famous rivers and springs?
Buried underground.
On a hot day the tongue longs for their spray.
I stand in the dried-up riverbed
Of the Ilissus, amongst the miniature gorges
Through which water once tumbled,
This spot sacred to Achelous and the nymphs,
Cherished by lovers and philosophers,
The air throbbing with cicadas;
Hollyhock, acanthus and mullein flourish
Under overhanging fig, chestnut, olive and plane,
Agnus castus still grows here,
Purple-flowered and bee-beloved,
Famed since antiquity
As a remedy for excessive lust.
And in the secretive thickets
Discarded condom wrappers lie.

In the cemetery black crowds of mourners
Silently pass to and fro
From chapels to gravesides,
Eating koliva, burning incense for the dead
Among the cypresses and pines.
Schliemann lies like a hero
In a classical mausoleum,
Carved with reliefs of his Trojan exploits.
Outside the cemetery gates
Old ladies sell votive candles
And in the window of the cake-shop “Mnemosyne”
Stand ornate creations for funerals,
Sparkling with marmoreal icing,
Exquisite borders with crystalline roses
Enclosing the names of the dead.