On Brac
I was woken by the bells
at five a.m., dreams scattered
into the sudden dawn;
covered by the white sheets
of Dominican robes,
I felt the whole town
swing like a thurible.
The people of Bol (behind
their cactus-green blinds,
under soil-russet tiles)
did not stir; their ears schooled
to the precise discipline of the monks.
They didn't hear the ropes
of the Adriatic Sea pulling
the waves gently to and fro,
sifting the silt for a memory.
Anchored in their beds
they waited like cicadas
for the sun to announce
the day, which would arrive
from the mainland
and unload holds of light.
2.
Swallows natter incessantly -
they rub slates together
and set fire to the sky.
Even cypress trees fanning
by beaches sweat tiny globules
of moisture. Pines whisper
between themselves, as if they knew
the reason for green along a coastline
lipped with stinging brine.
The mountains rise in an unbroken wall,
under eaves of forest, Bol is a nest -
the road spirals upwards in flight.
3.
On the meandering
dusty and tripping mule-track
past olive trees with their leaves
vertical as the midday sun
and sinewy trunks parched as the soil,
past rock-cactii with creamy suede
leaves rooted in an outcrop
each cactus a small oasis.
Startled by a greco whose camouflage
makes it seem an arrow
of lime-coloured stone
and amazed at butterflies
puckish and flying the flags
of a garden of colours
on their jittering wings;
as we inhale a breeze
from rosemary and thyme.
Vine-terraces crouch as though
in the shade of themselves,
with their purple grapes hanging
ripe as udders before milking.
Here, we're nestled like gulls
high above the placid Adriatic
where walls are firm-laid nets
over the hillside, each field
bringing in a paltry catch of olives.
We remark how much
like burial-mounds are the oval
piles of stone which trail
across the whole island of Brac
like a pestilence, the mystery
of their existence touched
by the roots of the vines.
4.
The only lamp is the moon
pale as the island's rock -
its reflection in the water
is the round light
of night-fishermen.
The pace of life still sways
with anemones in a rock-pool,
until an electric storm of yells
disturbs the sultry dark: thunder
of a mother's shout and lightning
scream of her child.
We move between balconies and porches
with their puffing pollen
of charcoal-fishy smoke and glow
of grills' bright night-flowers.
Each generation sits on its appointed wall:
old men nursed by trees reflect
on long-gone relatives, whose voices they see
darting elusive in the air, spawned by foreigners.
Young men angle for returned looks
with the bait of a smile ready-hooked.
We open eyes full like nocturnal animals,
to see waiters stoop to coin-round tables
(sold on the language of passive invaders) -
while, close by, the monument to a partisan
has monstrous muscles bulging
like so many melons in a sack.
(Croatia, Jugoslavia)
Page(s) 23-26
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