19_moment

FOR ONE MOMENT

Somewhat after Cavafy

That we have smashed their marble statues,
that we have chiselled the cross of Christ across their smiling faces,
that we have erected small chapels on the sites where pagan temples were,

does not mean that the gods are dead.
For at times, like a taut silence between two storms,
they can haunt us still.

O many islands of the Cyclades jutting from the turquoise sea,
your salt-washed rocks, your wind-swept trees, your stark angular hills,
have remained, in some way, loyal;

over centuries of shrill time have kept a sacred trace.
Thea…Paros…Thira.

As each blue dawn breaks, the sun strikes the white marble,
lights the parched ground -

then for one moment the hooded eye can see.
And, sometimes, an ethereal figure flits between two olive trees.