Old sun sinks
into the bowels of the city
which holds me in its windows,
in panes of light golden as mead.
Dusk arrives in a purple cloak,
dresser of towers and spires,
not softening the concrete brutal curves
of this maligned iconic genius
whose rawness of might is like a clenched fist,
whose vulnerable underbelly knows the hope
of arrivals and vast pain of final departures,
busking, shrieks and the reek of piss.
Yellow and pink the city lights up,
etching its electronic dream on a moving backdrop;
the palimpsest of museums, mills and stadiums
that have fired our consciousness
and kept us small and discrete,
a match box car and two tiny figures
lost within a car park’s cosmic changes,
sole witnesses to its theophanies
until the arrival of the suicide watch.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 