Watching for Dolphins

David Constantine

In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus One noticed that certain passengers soon rose From seats in the packed saloon and with serious Looks and no acknowledgement of a common purpose Passed forward through the small door into the bows To watch for dolphins. One saw them lose

Every other wish. Even the lovers Turned their desires on the sea, and a fat man Hung with equipment to photograph the occasion Stared like a saint, through sad bi-focals; others, Hopeless themselves, looked to the children for they Would see dolphins if anyone would. Day after day

Or on their last opportunity all gazed Undecided whether a flat calm were favourable Or a sea the sun and the wind between them raised To a likeness of dolphins. Were gulls a sign, that fell Screeching from the sky or over an unremarkable place Sat in a silent school? Every face

After its character implored the sea. All, unaccustomed, wanted epiphany, Praying the sky would clang and the abused Aegean Reverberate with cymbal, gong and drum. We could not imagine more prayer, and had they then On the waves, on the climax of our longing come

Smiling, snub-nosed, domed like satyrs, oh We should have laughed and lifted the children up Stranger to stranger, pointing how with a leap They left their element, three or four times, centred On grace, and heavily and warm re-entered, Looping the keel. We should have felt them go

Further and further into the deep parts. But soon We were among the great tankers, under their chains In black water. We had not seen the dolphins But woke, blinking. Eyes cast down With no admission of disappointment the company Dispersed and prepared to land in the city.

The Otter

Seamus Heaney

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered

And swung through the pool

From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders

Surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air

Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,

When I hold you now

We are close and deep

As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe

Otter of memory

In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,

Each silent, thigh-shaking kick

Re-tilting the light,

Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you’re out,

Back again, intent as ever,

Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,

Printing the stones.

Pickpocket, Naples

Angela Leighton

Lost for a subject, and missing a turn among flaking billboards, unemptied bins, pickings for a light touch, legerdemain, there’s an angel’s wing flexed at my back— this artist’s quick impersonal tap, his opportune grace to feel and lift the obscure object, sweep and scarper, to dance for a living, no one the wiser,

and I—unaware of my loss, or luck, a skimming finger at my zipped backpack, my almost biblically lightened load— notice too late the exchange of gifts: a stranger’s touch, a poem to start, and the deal’s struck: art for art.

Or think another: I walk in a dream past double-parked lots, boarded-up shops, a drab street market hustling its cheap stuff, and chase the ghost of a child that has run out of time forever—memory’s vagrant, aberrant self—and so miss the touch of a loss left freely at my back, an absent given, reimaginable fact—

and learn how verse comes sideways, adverse, across the mind’s proprietorial hold, stealing, shy and circumspect, surprised in the act of finding itself, a snitch, a cross, neither willed nor desired— sweet fool, now reckon your soul may be required.

The Albatross

Charles Baudelaire

Often, for sport, the men of the crew

Catch albatrosses, those immense seabirds

That trail, as fellow travellers,

The ship gliding along the briny depths.

Scarcely have they been put on the deck

Than these kings of the sky, clumsy and ashamed,

Pathetically let their great white wings

Like oars, drag beside them.

This winged explorer, how he is awkward and weak

Once so beautiful, that he is now laughable and ugly

One sailor teases his bill with a tobacco pipe,

Another limps around, mimicking the bird who used to fly!

The Poet is alike the prince of the clouds

Who haunts the storm and laughs at the archer;

Exiled on the ground amidst jeers,

His gigantic wings prevent him from walking.

King Demetrius

CP Cavafy

When the Macedonians deserted him,

and made it clear that it was Pyrrhus they preferred

King Demetrius (who had a noble

soul) did not—so they said—

behave at all like a king. He went

and cast off his golden clothes,

and flung off his shoes

of richest purple In simple clothes

he dressed himself quickly and left:

doing just as an actor does

who, when the performance is over,

changes his attire and departs.

The Smile on the Face of a Kouros

William Bronk      (I’m with William on this one)

This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel he was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps, and this carved stone remembers him not as he may have looked, but as if to define the naked virtue the stone describes as his. One foot is forward, the eyes look out, the arms drop downward past the narrow waist to hands hanging in burdenless fullness by the heavy flanks. The boy was dead, and the stone smiles in his death lightening the lips with the pleasure of something achieved: an end. To come to an end. To come to death as an end. And coming, bring there intact, the full weight of his strength and virtue, the prize with which his empty hands are full. None of it lost, safe home, and smile at the end achieved. Now death, of which nothing as yet - or ever - is known, leaves us alone to think as we want of it, and accepts our choice, shaping the life to the death. Do we want an end? It gives us; and takes what we give and keeps it; and has, this way, in life itself, a kind of treasure house of comely form achieved and left with death to stay and be forever beautiful and whole, as if to want too much the perfect, unbroken form were the same as wanting death, as choosing death for an end. There are other ways; we know the way to make the other choice for death: unformed or broken, less than whole, puzzled, we live in a formless world. Endless, we hope for no end. I tell you death, expect no smile of pride from me. I bring you nothing in my empty hands

The Voice of Hercules

JD Debris

Remembering that heavyweight we’d call Hercules, a mellow steroid fiend who never sparred, just raised

barbells ‘til he was swollen as that solemn British killer from Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear. He’d flex, hit vacuum poses in ringside mirrors, taking photo

after photo, & lounge in the locker room, nothing but a sideways Sox hat on. A garden-variety goon with a garbled, guttural monotone

& shrivelled steroid balls: so Hercules seemed, on the surface. But every word he spoke was praise— “So sick, bro”—softly, near-inaudible.

One night, the gym screened a pay- per-view—De la Hoya or Money May. All us gym rats came back in jewellery, jeans, & the reek

of cologne instead of sweat to cozy up between dormant heavy bags & watch the fights projected on industrial concrete.

I brought my old acoustic for between-fight amusement, background-strumming a soundtrack to our cacophony. Hercules sat

beside me, saying, “Bro, can you play a corrido beat?” I started to strum a stock waltz-meter, & Hercules, in a bass bel canto

that could rumble the cheap seats of an opera hall, began a Spanish ballad about a lost bantamweight named Amen, who had disappeared,

the lyrics went, to Mexico last spring, whom no one had heard from since. The gym was quiet one verse in. Pay-per-view muted, everyone listening

to this supposed bonehead channel beauty. To his ballad, its fragility—Fly, little dove, fly, he’d sigh

at verses’ end. I’m amazed that no one laughed at him— insults, back then, our lingua franca & form of praise—

in that moment so holy & ridiculous, when his lips formed O’s on long, pure tones, & every chord

perfectly—somehow— harmonized. I can’t tell you which prize- fighter won that bout,

or if we gorged on pizza & beer, blowing off our weight-making regimens. I can’t tell you if it rained, I can’t pretend to know if sparks flew inside all those ears

bent in unison toward the amen Hercules incanted. As for him, his trainer, a hardass marine, got sick of his preening

& told him go find another gym where he could kiss his biceps in the mirror, & drink his creatine & beast his endless deadlift reps.

How many songs has he sung since, in the shower of a distant gym where he still takes his sweet time soaping every ropelike vein?

What I know, I’ll tell: around the campfire of the muted fights that night, he was our horn of Gabriel, our nightingale mid-flight.

Sing it again, Hercules?                                                                        “Aight.”

Hymn to Isis

Not known

I call upon you, Isis, most graceful and high of the High Ones 

Hear your lowly servitor and grant your blessings 

Most full and gentle 

You whose crescent moon and stars 

Encompass the world

Wave your arm, and strew the glittering dust of many worlds 

Like seeds to be planted in the vast blackness of space 

Step gently across the bridge of many colors 

And rest in the mountains of flowers I wish for your offering 

That they may shine

Swell the fruit of the land, make mother with child 

Cause flying birds to nest, and bees to swarm 

Make the endless procession of life grow full and bountiful 

Bring water to the well and rain to the clouds 

Cause your veils to fall upon barren earth 

And make it holy

Bring warmth and richness into the hearts of men 

O essence of joy without end 

Radiant, beautiful, like the sun rising on a clear morning 

Scattering the clouds and mists of the night 

Into glittering droplets

Stand shining from that cloud which I see above me 

Dance on the blossom growing by the fence 

Bless the kettle in which I cook my food 

Shine your light, that I may read by it 

The wonders of heaven and earth

Call forth fruits in great abundance 

Mangos, plums, and sweet cherries 

Milk and wine, honey and oil 

That men may grow with life and health 

Like shining bubbles around a waterfall 

Rising and falling

Smile down upon us, that we may see you, great mother 

Set foot upon a flower, wife and lover of sunlight 

Spread your innocent radiance through the skies, untouched one 

That the earth may resound with your praises.