Greece's lonely season

04 August 2015

The lonely season

A tarnished pomegranate warms the chill niche of the windowsill,mottled like a faded kilim, mellow rose, dull gold;

the island in the autumn thrums to lyres of the bourini,the pagan tongues of log fires in the chimneys;

ancient ferries plying the Aegean in the winterrun the gauntlet of the gales like emissaries of reason.

It is the lonely season, time to skein the yarn of summeragainst the hollow tenancy of solitude;

the seas become insatiable, voracious for the sun,old women seem to shrink into their traceries of bone;

nomadic animals inhale the hills' keen air, their rusted bellsawakening polyphonies in limestone.

Bourini: a seasonal wind of the Aegean

Horsemen from the Parthenon*

Hard to imagine more substantialghosts, yet spirit-beings they are,astride their noble marble steedsthat prance and champ the air.

The pale horsemen of Pheidias are neitherhere nor there, replicas that gracethe metro station tunnelled underground,as if half way to Hades they take fright

and rear at something sensed. Travellerson platforms eye the escort at their flanks,heroic horsemen like the ones of Thrace,facing east and west with the arriving

and departing trains, whose passagestirs the displaced air to pluck at manesand riders' hair, and fret at reins,yet leave no change, no trace.

*Acropolis metro station, Athens

MeteoraThe Monastery of Aghia Triada

The woman climbing step by stepmeasures the rhythm of ascent,guiding her son between giantgranite boulders and gaunt monoliths.

Above them, on a dizzy crest,cloister walls extend the cliffinto the domain of mistand meditative silences.

Neither could define this quest,why they feel so comfortedby monks who offerviscous coffee, winter oranges.

Votive candles, then descentas evening chimes with village bells,and tinkling of homing flocksreminds them they are blessed.

At nightfall, snowflakes glide and spin:above their dim screen, hoveringon unseen wings, Byzantine voicessoar beyond the eagle's nest.

OdeonAncient Epidaurus

The odeon drinks in rich scents of fig trees and tart mulberries,breathless, void of spectacle, save stone withstanding centuries.

Astride a white horse afternoon arrives, parching in dust and flies;in somnolent hotels, siesta tosses behind sunstruck blinds.

The pale steed dappled by the leaves flicks gadflies, shifts from leftto right, and rolls a restive centaur eye as Pelion plays on his mind.

The Greek and Roman orators have fallen silent and retired,leaving the semicircle to contemplative wayfarers' eyes,

where sandalled strangers gaze upon the interplay of stone and time,as evening conquers grove and vine and edges azure day aside.

Ikaria

From afar light travelslike a bullet to the heart,a mirror offered to the suncatching me off-guard,piercing the gauze noontide hazeto find its mark.

A child's hand guides the

ARTS AND CULTURE

Greece's lonely season

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