over the sunrise views
porpoise-play
and Pagasaean Gulf
with all its blue-white
sun-tanned pleasures
above the summer homes
out of those mesh-canopied beds
past our outdoor showers
dripping with grape-vines and late-morning ***
decadent breakfasts of fresh
half-euro loaves
Käse and Jam
or Gurke-Tomaten Salate
with "Hermes" flying
in our ears
hair and food
over the wake-boarding lessons
the minefields of neon violet-yellow Quallen
beach games
done with a hundred some-odd oracles
the Tractatus
but not the dead seahorse i found floating before our argument
free from those schedules
the system of sunscreen application
bathroom and kitchen protocol
far from quintilingual fisherboys
the stucco church cartooned with gospel
its old priest grinning with his martial pride and simulated machine-gun fire
away from translating in my sleep
national pride
shame
and culture shock
forgetting that quiet dialogue of judgment
smiling between tourist and local
far from the baklava docks
Gigantes and stuffed peppers
Zorba refrains
swigs of Mythos and Feta
perhaps somewhere like the source of the Plateia spring
where once the Argonauts had quenched their thirst
past burnt olive trees
past the first line of blazing hills
there
there i sense the fertile green i've always known
O
my gaze drinks the sweaty yield of exploration's calm
breathless
wearing rivulets of long-yearned release
so redolent the shade
in a ravine holding ****** silence
i eagerly descend
and find my eagerness returned
in measured wounds
low lying branches
sparse brambles
crowding soon
see me crouched
and crawling down
as if to judge me worthy of its solace
the leaves of late summer
once blades of moisture
twice as sharp in death
pierce my pressing hands and knees
allow the taste of sweat to sting my path
as if embitterment itself becomes a sweetness
colluding for my darker whims
breaks of thorns enmeshed with trees
gnarled sentinels for raking
joyous stripes of blood
brittle roots eroding into air
to scour off my sunburnt skin
invigorate the tension for my goal
remembrancing the threading cores of shrubline life
i lull into the swoon again
stringing slow sun
in husks of brown
wire gates to consummate a nether craving's peak
choke and lash of myth and love
a penance ecstasied in shade
a fleecing dark i will deny
Afissos:
a little fishing village on the Gulf of Pegasus, Pelion Peninsula of Greece.
German words:
Käse: cheese;
Gurke: cucumber;
Quallen: jellyfish.
Greek words:
Plateia: village square
Gigantes:
"giant baked beans"; or, huge monsters, the children of Gaea, who fought the Olympians but were defeated by them. they used Mt. Pelion as a stepstone to reach Olympus.
Zorba the Greek:
a wonderful novel concerned with joie de vivre, and probably the most recognizable Greek tune there is.. plays continually for dining tourists in Athens.
Mythos: a brand of Greek beer.
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only work published by the Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. considered to be foundational to logical atomism, it read me.. more than i it, ending with the famous and overly quoted phrase, "Of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent." i think it augmented the culture-shock i convinced myself wasn't happening at the time, alone, surrounded by Germans and Greeks who, although they spoke fluent English and spared no kindness as i struggled with language, represented an unattainable sense of belonging that i don't think i ever had, even in my own country.. my own culture. despite a strong belief in the ideal of cross-cultural dialogue, i still experience a vast, almost shame-ridden silence when it comes to questions of culture --for judgements made out of hand, always out of hand-- for want of better words... having to say *something* even when it's not really clear. so just as i willingly indulge the surreal torment of doubting until i'm never sure of my words; i also say the first thing that comes to mind as if it's an indisputable truth...
the donkey i met on the other side of the ravine, which i couldn't resist scaling despite it's poor handholds of crumbling dirt and tiny dried roots, was like an old friend, sniffing and nuzzling me as if he was willing to share in my inexplicable loneliness, an instant understanding, commonality. made me realize how much of an *** i am, privileged to turn a holiday into a narcissistic hell