Songs for Santorini

1

Genesis of Santorini

In the violence
of dreams
Santorin hatched
the egg of fate;
nightmare unleashed
devils'screams,
ocean swallowed
Strongile.

A crescent moon
of madness hardens
where the earth's cracked
lips drink brine.
Queens in their
sarcophagi
sleep deep
below black Santorini.

2

Epitaphios, Santorini

Dark wings searching
the heart of night
encounter aeons lost to sea,
sunken cities of the mind,
marine voices, verdigris.

A thin dirge rises
out of the land,
shaped by oracular
lips of priests.
Candles challenge
the wind's black tide.

Two tears glint
on your cheeks.

3.

Garden of Stones

On the high, brittle
spine of the island
where no trees grow,
caught in the wake,
pacing behind
the petalled mound,
attenuated
wands of flame,
ears unattuned
to the dirge of priests,
hearing the desolate
voice in the stones:
a foreigner
in the starlit throng,
wanting to belong.

4.

Winds at Oia,
whinnying in crannies
of dead captains' houses,
summoning drowned sailor boys
to voyage out from Santorini,
keening in the rigging of thin
spectre-ships that haunt the seas,
winnowing the grieving
cries of widows from the terraces;

Winds that witnessed secret rites
of priestesses and Ptolemies;
drove the heavy vessels of Egyptian
queens to ancient Thira;
couriers of portents, charged
with first fruits of catastrophe,
among coiled ash-fed vines you thrum
like gold Minoan bees.