Méthana

(variation on a theme from Montale) The four o'clock silence in Méthana when the fountain clears its throat and the ships rumble in tail first and are gone before you read the name on a rusted hull in blue paint. And no one asks your name or wonders why you choose to walk bareheaded in the sun and empty road. The dogs demand nothing, squint over shoulders from the shade of a door frame. Red shores and sulfur baths, the past a song you never knew but know the words. Your opinion shrinks under blue-black peaks where nothing happens but the boat's brief disturbance, and the clenched nub of the fisherman's cigarette over spread out nets on the pier. The days fall like loose change from the pockets of sailors, as the bath house doors swing in a dry offshore wind. You were here when the baths were filled with bathers, when the hotel signs followed the slow curve of the lamplit bay and the clink and scrape of restaurant cutlery drifted over quiet boats and eucalyptus. And maybe you followed the same brown dog toward the port to watch the ships, and maybe the same sad hand touched your shoulder as the thin lights slipped out across black water like a sign of things passing.

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