Spirits

Yannis shouldn't drink in the afternoon,
it makes him dull and querulous, morose like me:

What do I care about Actaeon in your eyes,
this cultural tourism? Tell me about Ireland,
what you see when you walk the streets,
what ghosts prompt your murders, what shades
your executioners send down out of daylight?
You have your poor and your policemen,
your crime and politics and lawyers—
affliction is real, write about that.

He's right, I think, he has a point ...

and Artemis bumps the table, T-shirt and blue jeans,
a diamond glinting in one ear, phone to the other.
She stalks past, imperious and aloof,
radiant in her first flush of immortality.

           for Socrates Kabouropoulos

Bread Dipped in Olive Oil and Salt

Bread dipped in olive oil and salt,
a glass of rough dry white.

A table beside the evening sea
where you sit shelling pistachios,
flicking the next open with the half-
shell of the last, story opening story,
on down to the sandy end of time.

The stars coming out on the life that I call mine