On Ege, the curtain withdraws.
Lo: the dramatis personi
They bow, with fruits in hand. Applause
Echoes from mounds, is dampe’ed by sea.
Tarkan, Emel, Selcen, Lena,
And Bar’ş bow. Mist cloaks Aegina.

Bariş emerges from back of stage,
Fore papered dağs and blue-lit skies.
He pulls, in good post perch, a page,
And guerdons crowd with moral prize.

The barking dog and twitt’ring bird
Whose voice predicts of omens crude
Pass scalding beached wet sands with stirred
Cig-butts, half-shells, and broken rood.

The plump Tarkan with Ottom’n past
Bears sons who plumb the shallow creek.
For pears aplomb of nourished caste
Seek waters pumped and rich and meek.

The pairs of pears are all alike
With perfect sweetness one would eat
Twice twins and twice of twice of like
Till sugared haze tucks Turk in sheet.

Fair complexed Emel lies on sands
To char skin with rays cast on back.
Soft milky breasts with bloated glands
Depress the Earth with print of rack.

In womb the seedling of the peach
Will grow to harbor su of Earth,
Though lives within the fungal leach
Cracks nut and sheltered-skin stillbirth.

Two-faced Selcen is sweet and crass;
One day laced with dew and honey,
The next presents bronchitic mass.
He’s always in need of money.

Poor Selcen’s brothers live in filth,
And squalor knows them just the same.
Though dried they feature Prot’ean tilth,
With which they spread if just in name.

The figs of Selcen feed on milk
From Emel’s surplus work of day.
Sprouting Lena is clothed in silk
Of fine weave, hence the Law of Say.

There is more fruit in all square inch
If one would see through eye glass clear.
And dreaming one need not a pinch
To hold all things below so dear.

Cold breeze is wont to compensate
The sun’s cruel wrath on men prostrate.
And even in the agèd state
One may live once, yet once too late.
The seeds of fruits refurnish fate
And write anew in blankèd slate.

Bariş, Tarkan, Emel, Selcen, Lena,
Bow once more. The curtain cloaks Aegina.

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