Decanting oil

It is an art,
decanting oil,
unravelling
the golden skein
that flows cold-pressed
from bitter fruit
threshed from the limbs
of silver trees
in brittle winter,
beaten through the frosty air
all over Greece.

At summer's end,
on ferries from Aegean islands
casks arrive:
homely plastic vessels,
demajohns and practical
containers, flagons
of mixed provenance,
of ill-assorted shape and size,
to gild the season's frugal beans
with marbling and filigree
as autumn finds its austere way
to kitchens of Athenians,
far from the parent trees' blue-grey
that hangs like smoke
from stony tiers
in Mani and the Cyclades,
from Corfu to the Sporades;
glinting at the sun like shields,
a Laconian army
ranged in phalanxes
below Mystras,
across the Spartan plain.

The grey-eyed goddess
looked with favour on
her olive nurseries,
whose leaves became
the shadow of her irises;
the chrism of her time
flowed luminous
as if from votive veins.
To spill this gift
would augur ill:
to turn aside the evil eye,
ritual drops from onyx fruit
must fall on water in a pan,
but only from the hands
of an initiate.

From wizened groves
that scrabble for a purchase
on their stony slopes,
from lush growth in the mist-
softened ravines that lie
at Delphi's feet,
from scant soil
and from loam piled deep
with relics of antiquity,
there comes this oracle of riches
hidden in frugality,
this offering from obols
of small, darkened fruit
on hardy trees:
the golden oil,
new-pressed, pristine,
illumining the humblest fare -
the crusty bread, the pot of beans -
adorning the most lavish feast,
the banquet halls of lost empires,
of Diocletian, Hadrian...

The secret life of silver groves
distilled in a cheap plastic flask
awaits deft hands, the ritual,
decanting fluid into glass.