I would have liked to offer you
nights of the kabeiri: Mount Fengari,
Samothrace, mysteries and gods;
a muse whose face you'd give a thousand
nights to glimpse just once, unveiled...
Instead, the siren cries of curlews
desolate the unlit park -
dancing ground of painted men
in times before it was despoiled -
possums scolding in the figs,
proclaiming territory,
a cloying whiff of jasmine,
chilled retsina swirling
through the veins, igniting
inarticulable memories, vine-
histories: another land, another age
distilled in casks of rough-edged vintage...
Residue of restlessness,
the need to walk, to drink still more,
to spin the night out infinitely
in a myriad tales and ways,
till it becomes a thousand nights in one
before heartbreaking dawn
thuds at the dusty pane
with dull grey wings,
pursued by strident sun
for M.