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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MEDITERRANEAN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I passed you many times as I went down the cliff walk
Last Line: May be: best thing: endure: face front: get back on the line
Subject(s): Fish & Fishing; Greece; Islands; Italy; Mediterranean Sea; Greeks; Italians


1.

I passed you many times as I went down the cliff walk,
Little Olivetree, all stunted and stiffened, as you climbed
From the blue cove where the cold sea comes in and dies.

I never saw you. My eyes were fixed: stunned
By the brutal light dancing in the fields of the insane blue.
The entrancing sea -- indeed! I crowhopped and balked at seeing --

At seeing you, Comrade Olive. I had too much seaing.
And what were you pointing to or away from -- your arthritic hands
Pinned in their tattered gray-green gloves, the fineries of former days?

2.

But finally I had to see you: old, fruitless, lame.
Were you climbing toward fire to bake the bread of the drowned fisherman's
widow?
Or be crosscut to bed the village lovers fucking themselves insane

And back again while peasants, donkeys, women and kids
Listening applauded, sniggered or looked unappeasably sad?
Was it for this you shook all night in the cold salt fogs of the sea?

I don't understand you -- thanks be to all gods, goddesses and godlets!
You are not human -- and thanks be again for that!
You are just there -- unnoticed except for scent-posting dogs

Who piss on your gnarly roots each morning and twice on Sunday.
Relentless as the sea that rages daily in the shattered light --
Old guerilla: charging slow motion to take high ground!

You seem to want to be helpful to those up there in the village . . .
Ergo my fancy of fire -- your sacrificial death.
Such fancies can breed theologies; baroque and green as pond-scum.

3.

Nothing like bad Greek beer to clear the weary mind!
It seems, Comrade Olive, that you have got where we all
Will get. And I salute you, old fellow-traveler!

I halt, take a spray of your leaves and stride to a bar at the cove.
The sky is blessing the sea and the sea is blessing the sky!
Ho hum. Sycophants. Mutually co-admiring. But the beer is cold.

And I love this spray of olive leaves: gray and crazing
With frosty filigree of salt. I suck them. And the beer tastes fine.
So there is a grace from the halt by the tree; though not amazing.
May be: best thing: endure: face front: get back on the line.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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