(Ambassador)

You’ll come out and greet me underneath the plane tree, shake my hand warmly, spread your palm on my back, and guide me safely across the wide avenue, where we’ll sit at a shaded table on the whitewashed pavement: you, dressed in your light suit with the old baggy trousers, puffing the same worn pipe I’ve seen in your photographs, and the dog following you, curling in a doze; and I, tired and unshaven after my long journey, to find you out at last, to see you at all costs in the town where you live, located with some difficulty, its name being absent from maps in my language.

And you’ll ask if I have eaten; and I, who’ll really want to say, “Old man, I love you,” will smile and offer a banal, polite disclaimer; and you’ll tilt your big body back in the wooden chair, and say to the waiter, who’ll have appeared from nowhere, 'Káli spéra, Táki, fére éna ikosipendariko yiá to fílo mou ethó, kai yiá ména mía bíra. Kái káti mezedákia, ópos nomízis, vévaia - thalassiná, ómos.” ('Good evening, Taki, bring a 25 drachma flask for my friend here, and a beer for me. And some bits and pieces too, whatever you think best – but sea food of course.')

And to the table he’ll bring a small flask of tsipouro, iced water and a beer; and then, one after the other, dishes of fresh crayfish, crab, oysters, mussels, prawns, ringed octopus, grilled squid, anchovies, sardines, olives, and a mixed salad with féta. And you’ll sigh, put your pipe in the ashtray, unfold a white napkin and rub your hands together: 'Yes, we Ionians know how to enjoy ourselves. This reminds me of old times, before ’twenty two...'

And then, perhaps, I’ll stammer, 'Although, you know, we never met, before, I’ve walked your favourite streets – Syngróu, Panepistimíou – and even though you were long gone, I’ve visited the house you lived in when you were a guest in my own country. And now at last I’ve found you, here in your own place . . .'

And you’ll lean forward, quiet-eyed, smiling, and say, 'Akóu pethí mou ('Listen my friend' lit. 'Listen, my child'): I found my way to this harbour, and knew it for home, only when this mongrel yapped at me. And I’d been gone years and lost all my best companions: some disappeared suddenly, some were drowned at sea, some emigrated and never wrote letters home; some died in the north, and some in Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus... I don’t recall every name, but still I hear all their voices, and see each one of their faces just as if they were sitting with us now. If it hadn’t been for them, calling me across years from other distant islands, I’m sure Id never have set out in the first place. They gave me hope and courage. Their hope was my courage. And just as then, so now... But, forgive me. Shall we enjoy this fine spread? Tell me, are people over there still much the same?'

And I’ll say, simply, 'Yes,' and well clink glasses together, toasting life, and memory, and each thinking of those we love; and you’ll point out a very old man at another table, intent over a book, a glass of wine before him: 'Remember the one who said, What’s the use of poets in a mean-spirited age? – that’s him, sitting there. He was already here long before I arrived, and here he will stay, like me. No doubt his memory will long outlast mine ... But how about you? Have you much farther to travel?' Maybe then I’ll tell you something of my place in the hills, which I haven’t seen in years and wept when I last left it, which still today, as then, is an occupied city. But I shan’t go into detail: it will be time to go. You will insist on paying, and I’ll thank you for the meal and your hospitality; and we’ll shake hands again, and agree, without fail, some other summer, to meet and talk under the same plane tree,

                           

From 'Black Light', published  in For the Living, Salt, Cambridge, 2004.

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