12 July 1822 from the harbour Agios Dimitrios

Calm languid sea on every side
the air as though resting above
one fishing boat
                      sails out of the gulf
leaving a long, subtle wake.

*

and then nothing

the same etc sleep

*

at night a boat came in
battered, sails gone
from another world by the looks,
the Ariel
two men and a boy

*

They came ashore next morning and greeted Kapetanios Christeas.
They are a Shelley poet, Cpt Williams and a boy Vivian,
the Shelley recites Sophocles and revolution very excited,
we have it here already, saying life of triumph and something after a big storm.

The Shelley jumps about like a boy,
Christeas looks at him puzzled
in the great morning of the world.

*

He read Hellas to us, we sat around the tower,
he looks at us and says the final chorus was right,
the rest was bluster rhetoric with something about our fig tree
– which was not his to give for it anyway.
Christeas liked the fighting parts
and made the shouts of victory victory.

The Shelley dug his hands into the red soil
and held the white rocks in the shade of mimosa,
he looks at the sea everyday and will not leave.
The Shelley in earth twisting and turning,
came out from under that language
unblinking to get it right.

Empires crack
                  the snake renews itself
green and mighty spring returns.

*

The sea made noise all night,
mountains of water falling on the harbour;
I went to look in the morning,
the confused messages flooding the horizon
and the light changing depth;
here we sit like birds in the wilderness.

*

I am alive on Cape Sublime,
the sea and mountains blend in song
this place was once called Pephnos

Around the tower and into the deep,
mistress of many voices
walked into the water

Out of the shining I saw her then
keeper of the chambered sea,
white goddess who saved me

Here there is no shadow
in the sky, no authority
rising to dull the lens of light

here I am, this way boy,
swim to me, into my arms

 

Copyright © Kelvin Corcoran, 2003