In Kalamata
(a poem for two voices)
A passenger ashore is looking at the graveyard.
The sea is bare.
“No life jackets.”
He’s not blinking.
He’s drinking the saltwater
with burning eyes, clutching a mobile phone,
a conduit.
“Why put us through such anguish?”
Hands outstretched, necks outstretched,
hitchhikers thumbing for a god,
In the gods’ land,
olive-laden hills and lambs for sacrifice and slaughter.
“It was difficult because the
boat was in international waters.”
“Why put us through such anguish?”
A specklike ship, cradling limbs in steel,
the engine hums or is mute, indifferent,
“Not at all seaworthy.”
Surviving on that meagre diet of horizon*
the shadow glimpse of gulls, kittiwakes,
terns with their deep and rasping kir-reek,
circling.
“They are floating coffins.”
He’s waiting for his bride.
The gods observe, their hearts untroubled.
“Women and children, it seems,
were in the hold.”
A child by her side, eyes like quarries, pupils wide,
seeking the light.
“Why put us through such anguish?”
Come, as the windows glint in the mirror tide.
Please come, while the ships still signal against the dream of the cut-glass sun.
Do not sleep in that seascape, set for an age of heroes, and monsters,
a trident fence in the heaven-turquoise deep,
swollen faces in the ash heap
of thousands.
“They cannot survive the night.”
He’ll wait
for one more day in the eternal kingdom.
*”meagre diet of horizon”; line 2, Elizabeth Bishop, "Arrival at Santos" from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979.