Long braid of heavy flaxen gold
between the red and purple hands
of Macedonia and Turkey; Homer's sea and Balkan lands:
the tale of Thrace is not soon told,
the palimpsest bears scars and stamps of old
empires, whose fortunes run like sands
through history's hourglass; as fortune's moon contracts, expands,
so does the labyrinthine dance,
the wheatfields' gleaming, supple waves
that undulate on Celtic graves
and concertina into sheaves
beneath the harvest blade's bright glance.
Thrace remembers Orpheus, the singing lyre, and Roman greaves,
the shadows of Rodopi, where wild horsemen roved in bands…