A GRECIAN TURN

Poems from Corfu

by

David Radavich

1020 Williamsburg Drive

Charleston, IL 61920

(217) 345-9280

JOURNEYING

What remains of love?

Censure in the blood, memory

that lies, a taste of olive or honey

that will not leave?

I try to enter that church

with its storied frescoes, candles

to buy and ease our troubled

stumbling—yet the door

is only sometimes parted

to let in light and shadow,

this dance of having been and left

some dusty footprints of ourselves

that might be called feeling,

recollection, new mind

probing after

days made somehow

more beautiful for being

in this place, with you

in colors of the sky

somehow more elemental,

akin to sharp living that cuts

through rock and plies cold seas

of so much human unknowing,

resides now somewhere

in this biochemistry of self.

SAINT SPYRIDON

Why, exactly, do they kiss

these bones?

A silver sarcophagus ringed in lamps,

miniature portraits of madonnas

and saints, a line of believers

leading out the corner room,

out past the altar-rail, out to sun

and the world of shops and traffic horns

that bring us all to this place

of tawny colors: drapes, candelabras,

gold leaf that dances overhead

for those who kneel.

Almost everyone, old and young,

removes a golden tallow, pays and parts

to the sandy plot where prayers

are planted, sometimes answered,

always voiced in thoughts

icons bring to consciousness,

seeking to draw out through the mouth

to mumbling and the light of day

outside a place where bones

have lain for centuries, they say,

and saved a few from catastrophe—

If lips keep demons away.

TAVERNA

Where is there joy

without food?

Platters come balancing

over us, course after course,

framed in hanging vines

above the hillside giddy

with carafes of wine

that cool the noonday sun.

Everyone overeats and naps,

this part of living where

time moves slowly

knowing itself.

From their easy balconies

townspeople wonder

who the gargoyles are, what

toasts we raise

calling our pleasure with

a foreign tongue.

OUTING

Winding is what I remember.

Streets and shops and mountain roads,

sharp reverses and that hanging

in the air before the curve

corrects us to the path we know

goes forward.

Not serpent: Corkscrew

leading downward like the city bus

into the town, natives alighting,

embarking, to buy, to work,

to feed these tourists

seeking to find their center

and pull out that cork:

Taste the heady wine of sea

and history and rock and breeze

sunning at the base of

such pure spirals

we feel a bit dizzy

from the ups and downs

of life being pulled out slowly,

forcefully as a clock

reaming out our centuries.

METEORA

I've often wondered how monks

can live atop mountains,

never coming down.

Now women have joined them

in separate houses, perched

on pinnacles that jut out impossibly

like ancient eyeteeth,

just the miracles

they look to be beyond

human knowing or doing,

impossibly intricate painting

and stones now crowded with tourists

who can't quite climb the faith

of these contemplators

yet buy their crosses, stare

at icons, stand back with cameras

trying to frame God

so high, so remote

we feel faint climbing

down, massaging our knees,

leaving all those colors

in busses headed

to the flat known world.

WARNING

I don't want to take your time

for what is not essential.

A boat is the safest way

to get there, despite the rocking,

our pilot knows the way

many times over, we're tipping

but it's only temporary

and the breeze is beguiling

if the sun still burns.

The shortest linkage between

two points is oftentimes this chasm

filled with the unknown,

deadly if you do not love,

tempting as oblivion, new harboring,

or just a cleansing of our ways

before we retouch rock—

gingerly, knowing these urchins

can land us with

black spikes or sudden

lovers who can sting for days.

BORDERING

Poems have no meaning

in a life that's full.

Emptiness finds its match.

We all plug in our needs and hope

for remaining. Those who live among

stones know the unforgiving

exposure to every element,

how irrelevancies take flight and

hang their cloaks in our bags

heavy with departing,

dark as the closure of locks

and tags and customs we must pay

to travel where we'll never

see our words alone.