Day 3, we scooped from silt clay loam
A murex shell behind the wall—
Our wall—swept sleek, teeth brushed, and combed
For bullet, bolt, and bone in sprawl.
Across trench pulled like tanner’s cloth
The shattered reaps of diggers’ pride
Stared vainly up at trailing broth
From amphora toes, tipped underside.
We had not picked so merrily
As to disturb a coin below
But still, we murdered verily
Two sherds amid their russet snow.
Slow sunset blued a gypsum flake
As vipers burbled in the thyme;
I washed down crusts of olive cake
With figs berosed in fleshy slime
And gazed o’er rooves dipped marmalade
--Not violet, as the murex dye
Still undisturbed (despite cruel spade),
Splashed deep in shell and setting sky;
And though the scholars might berate
This amateur in sunburned straw
I had best now commemorate
That which stuck me with widest awe:
While they chant sanctus to the wall—
Our wall—the painten wares that hide
Expected, simply fail to match
My murex shell with paint inside.
Our hill looks far to Pyla Cape
Which holds the puck ’ring waters in
And has since Alexander’s rape
Of Vigla, soldier, talisman.
One fighter, I can but surmise,
Kept vigil—his defending troop
Slept thinly as a flax sunrise
Bathed his old home of squall and sloop.
T’was in this rarest tranquil, lest
The one-man watch on Vigla’s face
Spy inland vessels, o’er steep crest
Two ice-fine bolts leapt, giving chase
To our lad’s dreaded ready-smash
Of gong, with blackest fortitude
As he clutched, ‘neath a bleachy sash
His sea-born charm in bridal snood.
At long last, one dart found repose
In necknape, as he turned to look
While comrades, jarred by stones from doze
Fled swiftly out their crumbling rook;
But ‘Dreas peered to Pyla Cape—
His sloop, her spiring mizzen mast--
And, with faint hope for loves’ escape,
Drummed that lone cymbal ‘til the last
And dwindling fell upon the wall—
His wall—in which he placed a shell;
While siege draped balmy coasts in pall,
The sun—our sun—on Vigla fell,
For as we scooped my murex, inked
Since ancient birth by salty brine
Andreas’ book and ours came linked
At each trim end by hist’ry’s skein.
