A Time of Gifts

A Gift of Time

 
When I saw the moon's medallion
threaded on a beam of light
finer than the sheerest silk
above the gulf of Adramyttus
separating Troy from Mytilene;

when I saw the fishing skiffs
like hollowed rinds of sectioned fruit,
pomegranates without seeds
rocking in quicksilver sea
above the sunken remnants of a city;

when I saw the women
on the jutting rocks atop the cliffs
at dawn and sundown,
wearing white kerchiefs and homespun
cotton gowns, embroidering traditional
motifs that take the pulse of time,

it seems I didn't realise then
how fortunate I was, how blessed:
with all those years ahead of me
that have been spent so freely since,
wildflowers to grace my room,
plucked where heroes lie entombed,
olives from the Troad groves,
decanters filled with Trojan wine,
and fragrant bread, consumed
to chimes of nightingales from violet heights
occupied by asphodel and columbine,
echoing across millennia
from Pliny - who proclaimed
this site the fairest of its kind,
the most sublime in maritime
antiquity - through bloodthirsty
Byzantium to present tense,
a century of strife then in decline...


I did not pause to thank the gods,
nor did I venerate their shrines,
but registered my own mortality
as arsenic or strychnine: 
that such loveliness could be -
the Doric temple, crystalline,
Lesvos floating like a lyre
upon translucent sapphire sea -
that such loveliness could be,
as if for all eternity,
and yet by mortals, as by those
with gasping, hoarse, despairing cries -
the beasts of burden, commonly despised -
it must be worshipped briefly
with the eyes, then left behind.



*Assos, city of the Troad