. . . now that dusk falls . . .

King sun, rosy cheeked, day’s sovereign coin,
you touch me, and my skin becomes a cornea,
my spine an optic nerve, and my body trembles
half dazzled by the pool of gold you pour
over this sea and city, and I’m blinded.
Here once stood rows – and still I know they stand –
of houses and streets, belonging to another city,
not this one you have utterly transformed.

We walk along the waterfront. The night
fishermen’s boats are ready to set out,
motors chugging, paraffin lamps in the bows,
and the whole town’s out for the promenade,
lovers arm in arm, and young men swaggering,
mothers and fathers, children eating ice-cream,
old men watching from tables at pavement cafés,
and the darkening hills move closer, like friendly animals

Sweet evening skyglow, spread on hills and bay,
your arm grazes mine now, as if by accident,
like the touch of this young woman who walks beside me
with heavy hips, small steps and swinging gait,
jet hair swept back, delicate throat and shoulders
deep summer bronzed, and her olive brown eyes laughing.
I drink you, shimmering light, like wine, like music,
as her ancestors have drunk you thousands of years.

Porous city, her name is Eleftheria,
and though your scars are grey flecks in her eyes,
still, at this hour when light and light’s inflections
play subtly in her face as speech or song,
hers is the ancient right to walk this quayside
as instrument and guardian of your light
collecting it in the wells of her deep pupils,
and hers, the darling freedom, to tread you like a dancer.

Darling evening, light thousands of years old,
clear throated singer, lovely as this woman,
how can I not adore the grace you cast
this city and its people in, a mould
that sculptures all it touches, the whole world?
I have become your slave, if not your citizen.
And thirsting to drink you wholly, I would fill
every pore with your radiance, her freedom.

Richard Berengarten Burns