Ages Apart
I was talking to Pytheas of Massilia on Friday.
He was still in the grip of a cold he caught
returning from Thule.
Twas as if the world’s oldest albatross
– whom some call Wisdom –
sang with a bee hummingbird
that fled Cuba from Irma to Cork.
Such was the storm song …
such the Artic bass …
My Greek lapsed as I left the Parthenon,
his Irish, foreign, tinged with Scots Gallic,
guttural.
We stuck to sign language,
ice on his fingernails.
I put that down to the disgrace
that few believed his stories.
Wrapped in song,
building melody
on staves of flesh,
major and minor,
there was little between us.
Harmony.
Ceremony.
Destiny.
Two men with hearts
dependant on blood
lightly to coagulate
in hurricanes predicted to return
(and persist).
__________________
I must tell Tim Miller
Pytheas read his poem
in the Shetlands,
despite the middle-aged ‘stupidity’
never learned from pilgrims.
Smiles we made over gin and tonic,
over ice.
We called our chorus
‘Brothers from Earth’
We are brothers from Earth,
conceived in shadows’ stage,
conjoined and free in birth,
alive in every age.
From Bath to Cork with baby Grace 