You were already ancient
when we met, white city
of my soul. Your earlier selves
lay beneath my feet,
their presences revealed
subconsciously,
uncoiling from sleep's labyrinth
to surface in our dreams,
in the apartment shaded
by acacia trees, below
the Theatre of Dionysos,
where Zitrou intersects
Mitsaion Street.
Insects whirl like maenads
in the precinct of the god-ephebe,
winged nuptials of swarming ants
that last a single day,
while in the grove
the jays and wrens and thrushes
sing as lovers might,
luminous with joyous contemplation.
I am glad this city
that has captivated me
surely will survive me by millennia;
yet I regret that one life span,
a mote in time, is incomplete,
too ephemeral to grasp
the mysteries.
As a shadow dies when she
who cast it on the stones
expires, phantom vessels put out
from the harbour at Piraeus,
never yet diminishing
the city's boundless treasuries,
nor depleting Dionysian energies;
so I leave the spectacle -
enriched, ecstatic and bereft -
to singers, dancers, great tragedians;
Athena's owls, the beggars, muses,
temple strays and strangers...
