And Theseus sails to harbour in the midst of the open sea.
The continents have pushed the ocean back, the islands erased
like pallid grass in the vestibules of abandoned
temples. Bring over the sea: sailors shout to him from their ships.
Dark has taken dominion over all.
Anchors float beside lighthouses.
Gulls already black from the night's precipitated
sediment enter tunnels of air.
The land has slipped away from the Moon; although
constellations of fish bleach on cracked rock
with no high or low of tide. On the radio
they forecast a south wind.
The horizon creeps through the links of ships' chains.
The open sea has drawn back.
Patches of damp dissolve between house walls,
nearer the cape and the tower. Dark falls inwards.
Rope won't settle into mud. Inscriptions
and left-over letters melt on pavements like fishscales.
The inner yards in the port quarter smell
of swallows' nests.
What painter sketched the tracks of the marathon
swimmers in an endless curve?
He switched the transparent waves for soot
freed from underground. Appointed good to be evil.
The shore's caved in; under its slabs of stone green slime
spreads over the dry land. South wind.
Illusory fields sway in the building's stifling corners,
the seeds of palm trees.
You study a water-logged branch, like the beak
of a beached wader. The wind has split the slats
of the window, overturns sunshades and wicker
chairs roped to the trees. Is the boat just a shadow
among submarine springs?
An awkward ship's piano sounds from the café.
Someone calls from the ships, quiet curses.
Hurried steps along streets. A cigarette coal below the terrace.
Perhaps you forget the way, and where you were going?
The bell-tower's vertical is erased, and the face
of the town clock. The square is like a cobweb
torn in a mass of mesh.
Likely it's no better behind the high wall
surviving on the edge of the drowned shore.

Translation: 2007, Kim Burton