Cretan Shepherds

Beneath mandila furrows
Sun squinting memories reside
And images of black provide
A brotherhood of mountain pride.

All hairy faced and raki eyed
You strut a slow but princely gait
And know that all the world will wait
Now that your presence sets debate.

And so you shepherds congregate
With such great peacock-like profile,
You bunch so matey, so tactile,
In unsophisticated style.

Thus ever flows eternal trial,
The confluence of East and West,
A perfect symbiotic test
Of custom, culture and conquest.

For now the shepherd has progressed,
His TV set has pride of place
He's in the 20th century race
And four-wheel drive is commonplace.

His wife even has factory lace,
Though lamb, please God,
Will stay the same,
It may go by another name,
But shepherds will retain their fame.

And Oh the folly, Oh the shame
Should mavro turn another shade,
Should shepherds take another trade,
Should raki turn to lemonade.

For all things lanate never jade,
Your studded shirt and black Levis
Keep dark as moonless winter skies
The old cut diamond in your eyes.

(Mandila - a Cretan scarf.
Raki - clear white spirit
Mavro - Cretan for black)

Haiku on blue

I saw the voyage
Of a floating caique
In the blue of dream

I saw the dance of
A rainbow dither in trance
Of aquamarine

I saw the splash of
Everlasting life in an
Embryonic stream

Sunrise

Tinged by the dawn I invoke the sun
To break the circle of the cosmos.

I put away the mark of the moon
And empty myself to the four winds.

My fringed fingers tingle with photons
From the revolve of the universe
And I am adrift on the current
Like a rooted sea-anemone.

The Angelus-bell resounds its first
As the ground bursts blood
And warm blood burst into
Aeons of thought that steep
My mind with talk of
Yesterday's tomorrow.

And a karmic stalk of brilliance
Scorches my humanity
And scars the pink cocoon
From which I rise,
To bathe in Holy sentience
Of mankind.

Morning

A dragon hump looms in zulu three hundred light,
Holding the blackness back beyond the moon,
An earth-edge boundary on night patrol.

The east-arc spot tracks its flank
spilling a Gulag beam onto the periphery
Where sentinels stand to guard deep hollows

Ready for Apollo to kiss the dark.
And virgin loam flushes with that first touch
Making shadows yawn and creatures scurry.

Dawn-song echoes spheres to wake all earthlings,
While lambent-light floods the hump with morning
And orchis - cretica smiles at the day.

Penelope

How many days before you return
To the woman who waits?

How many silent nights must go by
With no-one at the gate?

How many sheep must I count to
Woo me into a slumber?

How many moons illuminate my
Womb-fires fading ember?

How many love sparks must fizzle
Out in this cocktail of dream?

How can I keep a sun-filled heart
When you're far away upstream?

Haiku on love

Lights burn in your eyes
Like Cretan caiques on
The ink-tide of night.

To smell the sweetness
Of your lips is to be in
Persephone's lea.

When I see your eyes
My heart eats fire and I am
So very hot inside.

Adonis

A tiny fish bone caused his pain,
Or so he said.
It was a niggle behind his tooth,
But no-one knew.
And what did it matter anyway,
It was his pain, not communal.
Like Tin-man with a tummy ache
It was impossible to detect his discomfort,
But the sharing seemed to ease
A quota of his suffering,
An the recongnition that I felt
Caused a temporary numbness
Of my own hurt.
I could feel the warmth of his aura
Mend the break in mine,
And the token shell which fizzed with vitality,
Became an anchor as he took it from his neck
In a moment of friendship.
He told me that his pain was just,
For the taste of the fish had been so good.

For Ralph and Uschi

Ralph, I promised you a line
What a pity I cannot make it trail through the air
Like your Havana.
Even a bi-plane could not string the sign
I want to write.
And then you asked for two,
One for Luck you said,
The other for Love.
Well if Love is passion
Then thank you for the second line,
For without passion what is Luck.

And Uschi, you flit
About the uncultured streets of Sissi
Like Cleopatra above the mob,
So beautiful that I am envious.
And I know Ralph spends his time
Writing second lines
For you.

Who would have thought that
Over a bottle of Jim Beam
We would meet in such a place,
Luck!

I slipped into your space
For no more than a sip
And tasted warm kumquats
On the lips of a Matador.
Passion!

(Sissi is a small fishing village in Crete)

Mike

Say 'hello' to Mike
When you meet him in the street,
Try his food it's plentiful
His charm a real treat,
Don't cry shy of foreign pies
Or fish you've never tasted,
You'll find his meat is always fresh
And specially decorated.
Accept the Raki when it comes,
It's one of life's adventures.
Be a devil warm your gums
And sterilize your dentures.

Haiku on a Bouzouki Player

Lost in acoustics
My bouzouki player made
The crockery dance

And fingers tapped to
His interpetation of
Zorba's melody

It mattered not that
He was in a taverna
He had his own space

The Ancient Cedar Forest

I went where there were trees
Before the pirates came
Leaving charred embers

Now bald petrifaction
Like bleached skulls remain
Uncovered skeletons

Earth-skeletons exhumed
By earth-breath
And earth-tears
Weeping for lost trees

Wrinkles in my Sheets

There are wrinkles in my sheets
I did not see before,
And already there is knocking at my door,
But I am not prepared to let him meet
My crumpled bed until I've made it neat.
The iron grows heavy in my dimpled hand
And steadily I lean the creases out,
'Till ruck becomes a plane I understand
And rumpled nap compressed and innocent.
It would not surprise me
If I heard it said,
"The Japanese have ceremony of making-bed",
Performed with perfect symmetry
Billowing sheets unfurled
Would be re-formed,
Smoothly laid out with a sweep of the arm,
Corners tucked flat in origami fold,
No less an expression of the love held
By the tea-makers.
Making beds should not be done in a hurry,
Rather lined like a Faberge egg
Ready to cradle some chamferless jewel.
When my bed is made, furrows ironed out
And the turn-down taut,
Waiting unrumpled for its precious let,
Then, when there are no wrinkles in my sheets,
I will be ready to open the door.

(this poem won fourth prize in the Ouse Valley Poetry Competition 1992/93)

Yiorgos

You were in your best light that day
As you posed with the great curly horned ram
Surrounded as you were by all that chinkling
And the silent eclipse of eagles in the eye of Uranus,
With only tall crags and the vee of the gorge
And the hush of the wind as it passed to the sea.

You were for me a valiant cavalier
With that angular stance of a proud Hussar
And I could see you in a braided jileko
With the flash of steel in your cummerbund,
No doubt your boots were handmade
In the mountains.

And later, all those qualities of chivalry blazed
When you shared souvlaki and a glass of beer
With the old priest Nicodemus at Selinary.
We cooled our hands under the fountain flow
Imprinting the ocean with our friendship.

O Agrotis

The terrace is a geriatric wing
Beneath a canopy of foliage,
Where you flop in meridian shadows
Panting like a pride of well fed lions.
Your skin is a slow drying doe with an egg glaze,
Pools of opaque albumen are blood burst eyes
That squint through phased irises,
Black and hollow like tunnels of your mind
Etched with agronomy, stench and incest.
And in between a sweet virgin
And the scent of oregano.
Did you ever have colour in your life?
No,
Colour and comfort were not your lot,
Only grey,
Grey, grey and more grey,
Layers of grey
That will be peeled from your body when you die
Like the layers of an onion bringing tears.
Now all you need is a rackety chair
And patched workwear for planting cabbages.
There is no woman's clucking here,
Only the bark of your grumbling soliloquy
And a siphonic slurping of coffee while you
Snook and spit over a dish of olives
And a karafachi of raki.
And your woman meanwhile
Is on the hill gathering horta in a plastic bag.
No doubt you will take your katsouna to her
If she doesn't feed you or let you fuck her,
Even though you smell of old goat.
And between the gobbing up and grunting
You still have the gall to ask me for sex
As though the only memory you have
Is nature's call in your bollocks
Like a need to urinate or finger beads.
It is too late for education,
An eagle points its wingtips to heaven
But all you see is the earth that bore you.

(Horta is the name given to wild greens)

Yannis

Yannis thought his luck was in
When the blond he'd been eying up
Accepted a drink.

She had the same thought.
He tested her, to see how easy she would be
By placing his hand on her shoulder
In a matey way.
She'd been leaned on before
And shrugged him off,
But did it with a smile.

He tried again
This time it was a very sublte move around her
As he asked to be excused.

On his return she moved forward
To avoid collision.

Hmm, he thought,
Not so easy.

She planned to take him
At approximately one a.m.

He placed another drink in front of her.
"I'll get this one," she said.

Haiku on a Greek Salad

Beneath white feta
Is a succulent garden
Of summer sunshine

I soak my bread in
The virgin oil of winter
Tasting Katsounas

Trilling mandolins
Make trellised shadows dance like
Godfathers in spring


Note: A katsouna is a long stick which is used to beat the olives from the tree.

Looking out to Sea

Looking out to sea

In the eminence of emerald drifts the idea of
Menelaus leaving Crete,
With the power of Mycenae
Crusted on his feet
And venomous blood
Surging those bronzed pectorals
Of a thwarted youth.
And woe betide the bold Paris
And his bride, stolen or otherwise -
Conjecture,
But so devised as to create a war,
So terrible,
So prolonged
That ten years passed and heroes lost
Before they saw their brave Prince home,
Wearily to Sparta come
With the fair Helen
So unhappy won.