Brief Landing on the Earth's Surface

Leaving Crete

Leaving Crete In the third-class berth an old man moans, and turns in his sleep. He stinks ofouzo, sausage, sweary clorhes. The ferry bucks and groans toward Athens, but in his dream he's [ravelling back ro Kamilari on a bus, past olive groves and graveyards where the dead are buried beneath relics, things they love, photographs and little bottles. a wooden Aute preserved in glass. Ir raules into villages where goats and chickens scuttle from the road and drying trousers on a line are tangled by the winds from Minos, lush with fragrances ofdiuany and quince. Home! the old man cries but then the bus is gone and he is walking, entering a room where sunlight thins in corners dark with permanent dust. He dreams ofwaking in an iron cot but in his waking he is carried deeper into sleep. He turns again, moans, his mouth against the vinyl bunk, a ticker in his pocket. Outside the porthole the sea swallows islands as they pass: slabs ofwhite rock dissolve, fold into black. 34 ...