Once, camping on the lower slopes of Parnassos
I bought fresh quince, their yellow lobes a visual feast,
exotic and callipygous; flesh grainy, bland by contrast
as wild chokoes plucked from childhood vines.
I pared the yellow rind, and stewed hard segments
on a gas-ring in the open air, as day declined
and shadow-blues advanced across outcropping rocks
and shoulders of the mountains striding north and west
to Pindos, watching liquid flush to rose and cyclamen
in the enamel pot, then stain with richer, deeper dyes -
the hues of pomegranate, garnet, wines of Peloponnisos -
echoing cloud-strata in the skies above the Gulf of Corinth;
grainy flesh relenting, yielding esters to the atmosphere
and secrets of its chemistry to water it was steeping in.
Nobody had told me quince could capture sunsets, distil
dawns inside an old white cooking-pot on Parnassos.
The Spartan repast transformed into treat upon the limestone flank,
the lights of Chrysso - which means gold - linked loosely,
strings of kombolloi; the lights of distant Galaxidi misting into nebulae.
*kombolloi: Greek beads, carried by men ("worry beads" in English),
similar to prayer beads but no longer used for that purpose.