Epic

It’s you I’d like to see Greece again with

You I’d like to take to bed of cyclamen

You know I nurse a certain myth

about myself              that I descend

and am part Thracian or Macedonian

cleaving to a Hellenic mystique

after centuries’ migration inland

a full moon             rising over the Acropolis

I can repeat the scene        this time à deux

as then I had no one to kiss

slicing halloumi amid the hullabaloo

of a rooftop taverna in   July

The doors that opened to lovers

pulled like tree roots from darkness        I

close upon us now like book covers

The alcove in which we embrace

is cool with brilliant tile

and weirded by a dove’s note       chase

of ouzo with Uzi          junta-style

History makes its noise      we duck

till it passes      Love we think is our due

Not we think like the epoch

the unchosen thing we’re wedded to