Ruth Sophia Padel

1946 / Wimpole Street, London

Herodots In Egypt Remembers Delos

The ground verdigris, fluffy with young mosquitoes. Waters
as sacred as these, as fatted with reeds. Bronze palm planted
to Sun. Lizards, Nile alligators, hindquarters
rolling on granite sphinx-chippings. Air salted with confident
brown larks, Travelling, you remember (mind
upturning these foreign priests, finding
the causes) that stamen-summit: white long
unbloody altar, giddy blues under you, calyx of bronze
flat islands unfolding, blind.
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