I.

Some speculate that the Earth is still,
While the sun circumscribes the horizon.
Others, in the plurimos molecular configurations
Of water see rotations and vibrations, and
Short, jagged displacements of the bumbling bee’s navigation.
And the water moves to and fro in its silence.
The world — or at least everything in it —
Is in a constant state of dance.

The colors swish, the beer foams, the legs
Reintroduce themselves to the baked sands of the Aegean.
And the drums beat to the undulations of the waves.

II.

The pupils of the child are calibrated to the center;
The eye sees omens where it goes,
Amid the cushions of comfort.
And whereupon one finds a grain of sand, one may,
Or should,
See the stars.
For should he not, then the bitterness of tea, or fermented malt,
Will have surely visited the day.

III.

The dream beats also to the soft skin of men,
If be there any,
As they march southward to the field,
Where once a bazaar furnished the toil of the field.
And then men go in with force,
To push the airs
Of silence. Into the far precipices of memory,
To a fall of multi khans and Sultans, far, far,
Into a lost cause or several ones,
Where the silence will be taken.

IV.

The flagellum is carried to the nest,
Where the hens roost.
With violent motion, honor is dressed in flesh,
And sanctity, clothed in sashes of satin,
In mimicking the feminine softness of November’s sun.

V.

The season of the easterly winds and the westerly winds is nigh.
The rarefaction of hands is settled by the compression of feet.

The kernels of progress are soaked in cold waters,
Where the beached towels are plastic with neglect.
And march the meters of effect,
For plain tunes have daughters.

[This poem will be featured in my upcoming novel, A Fortnight by the Sea of Aegeus.]
Gumbet,
September, 2023.