[ilds] Standing on Milos II

[Denise Tart & David Green]

  Standing on Milos
  by Roy Hedges & David Green - May 2009


  I could have gone to Corfu
  the green of Ionian Greece.
  Ended up on Milos, where
  a moonscape, spring-flowered,
  jars volcanic sleep.


  Wine-drenched vagrant Durrell,
  sang sun-washed praise
  to olive groved Crocyra,
  to folds of the Marine Venus,
  sea-sucked and rising
  from the foam of Rhodes,
  to the Gothic hills at Bellapaix.
  Not this sparse emptiness.


  God's gift, Greece in Spring.
  I dive into the sky from scented hills,
  float in the wine-cool sea,
  drift above islands
  blue-hazed and distant
  like sun-warmed ghosts
  haunting grassed-over Delos.


  Standing on Milos
  where peasants sway to market on donkeys,
  hung with onions and garlic.
  Passing down hushed and huddled streets
  through murmured voices, 
  preparing Easter rites in simple rooms.


  Night, and the candle flames 
  stand straight in solemn stillness.
  The incense-swinging procession of priests
  waft slow orbs of smoke, almost pagan.
  They will roast animals: 
  the lamb of God, the goat of older times.


  Embrace the stony, stark white and blue Aegean. 
  Islands, sun-swept and swirling
  rising out of new awareness,
  gorse and yellow broom of spring
  sweeping hillsides where gnarled peasant
  and olive tree bow to fading light,
  as fishermen beat octopus on ancient stone.


  How can men clamber about galleries and shrines,
  when they could stand above Klima on Milos
  and feel the centuries where the shepherd is artist
  and goats make music with the wind?


  With words by Roy Hedges and David Green



Denise Tart
Civil Celebrant - A8807
16 William Street
Marrickville NSW  2204
+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
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