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Deborah Tyler-Bennett

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Taste the City

Remnants of apple-tea, like constellations, star my glass.
What colour sand’s below your feet?
Does cinnamon or clove pervade the market-stall?

Here are orange groves, ancient dates
fan sinews on hard sugar walls,
grills refigure shadow, branches caul
the storyteller’s cobalt cap.

Just once, traveller, don’t wrangle over entrance-fees
(the rip-off you resent and wait for) ignore
‘must sees’:
been there, done that, my parents
went to Palestine and all I got
was this lousy bit of true cross.
Forgo biblical sites - shivered anthills -
there’ll always be names to tick-off, verify...
Inhale, clove or cinnamon?
Red sand streaking soles?

Bitter figs - tepid water on the tongue,
or forgotten lover’s touch
pressing your upper arm.
My friend, take time to clutch
lime-tea’s aroma, sweetened almond drop
against the palate.

Drawing coffee’s thick damask about you,
head for where constellations blink like old men’s eyes.

 Based on seventeenth-century traveller in Palestine, Al-Rihla Al-Ayyashiyya, as described by Nabil Matar

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