Filoxenia

If you should reach this city
with your votive offerings intact,
you will receive mementos
in return from the metropolis:
the voices of Athena's little
owls on the Acropolis;
wild olive trees, their obol-fruit;
the onyx tongues of cypresses;
a cohort of stray curs that sleeps
all day outside the temple gates;
a permit to ascend the sacred
eminence, the violet heights
beloved of master architects
and artisans of Attic light.

You will be serenaded by cicadas
till October wanes; you'll inhale jasmine
essence along Queen Sophia's Avenue,
explore streets named for Aphrodite,
Bacchus, Eros, Byron, Shelley;
be assigned a theatre seat of honour
for the festival, with ghost applause
resounding for Euripides' new tragedy,
raucous laughter greeting Aristophanes.

You'll borrow from a lexicon
whose masters worked in poetry
as others crafted gems and precious
metals in antiquity; shaped marble,
delicately veined as Artemis - Pendeli's
core: these pleasures that augment
the store of sojourners
will all be yours.

Hypnagogues will seek you as you sleep,
to take your hand in theirs
and lead you through the city upon city
far beneath your feet. You won't remember
this, for they will mask your dreams
with commonplace, yet as you walk
those streets, you'll wish to dream
their dream, and never wake.

Should you arrive bereft of gifts,
you'll still be welcomed as a guest
and charmed until you come to dread
the word 'farewell', the leavetaking...