Song in exile

~~Xenitia~~


Without my island
I cannot be.
This is not life,
but misery.
The ectoplasm
beckons
where light lavishes
its clarity,
to voyage
on the shining path
where heaven
bestows clemency
in pearl
and rose
and lilac
on the timeless
sea of memory,
chameleon Aegean's
azure noons,
shape-shifting
indigos,
light squandering
itself on limestone
scarps' fragile austerity,
where north winds harp
in withered grass
and twisted silver
olive groves,
a handful of whose
bitter fruit,
a full oil flask,
a crusty loaf,
some goats'-milk cheese,
are gifts from God,
to feast the senses
and the heart.

That is where
I long to be,
not in the concrete-
grimaced city
where the light
is weary,
melancholy
as an orphaned calf,
mornings
lacking lustre
lose their radiance
to malls of glass…

I must return
where dawn
is old as Earth,
child of the universe,
and new
and fresh
and passionately
revelatory
as birth…