Two months after staying on the Italian island of Procida, I visited Rhodes in Greece, where I met my future wife, the Bulgarian poet Tsvetanka Elenkova. It is curious that having reached out to God on Procida and got what I considered to be an answer, I should then so quickly meet my future wife. My life would take a radically new direction, and three years later I would move to Bulgaria, which would bring me into contact not only with family life and Bulgarian nature, but also Orthodoxy and a different mindset.

So these four poems are a continuation of the poems I wrote on Procida. They were also included in my poetry collection Even Though That (Sofia: Proxima-RP, 2004, with a parallel Bulgarian translation by Tsvetanka Elenkova and Rada Panchovska).

IT WAS A BAD DAY

for Tsvetanka Elenkova

It was a bad day.

I was woken by the builders at 7:15.

I was so tired that, working in the morning,

I fell asleep. I wasn’t taking much in

anyway. When I came back for lunch,

they were still at it, this time

drilling on the wall of my room.

Not much, I know, but I’d been hoping

for a kip. I left in a fury,

went walkabout, ended up in the cemetery,

unable to make sense of the living.

The dead weren’t too forthcoming

either, unwilling to let me in

on the secret of all this.

I was just about beat,

so at four I took my work

down to the beach.

It wasn’t a particularly bad day, I know.

It could have been much worse.

Someone could have died or

got sick, or done something awful.

I was tired, that was all,

letting it get on top of me,

until, after a swim, my mouth

parched with salt, she appeared

out of the sun, drilled a

cold drink on to my chest.

Not much, I know, but it made

me feel a whole lot better.

I looked up then and took it all in.

* * *

THE SCORPION

The scorpion just came to the wrong place at the wrong time.

It wasn’t to know.

It waddled towards us, content almost,

as if it had news to convey,

some juicy gossip, a joke, something like that.

You could tell it had something inside it wanted to get out.

But we don’t speak its language,

and it was heading straight for the dull, yellow light

of our front door.

Lisa jumped up, skipped off in search of a broom,

returned like a gymnast across the mat.

That scorpion didn’t have long to live,

I could have told it that.

It hit the step before our front door,

took a detour.

It may have changed its mind,

been heading out of our lives,

in search of someone else to talk to,

someone a bit more receptive,

someone who spoke its language.

But it was too late for that.

I leapt outside, turned

as Lisa raised the broom (the axe),

took aim as the scorpion cleared the step

(stairs were not an obstacle then),

brought down the broom,

missed!

raised it (the scorpion was fighting an invisible enemy now),

took aim for the second time…

The scorpion’s last vision of life

will have been a broom hurtling out of space –

a spasm – and Lisa washed down the tiles

and Torborg asked if scorpions were dangerous.

*   *   *

THE NON-REMISSION OF SINS

Standing on the other side,

it’s too late now,

I can’t get back and if I did get back

I’d probably just step out again,

and feeling miserable

like I’ve wrecked, ruined, scarred, sullied,

spoilt the game, opened my eyes,

turned on the lights, taken off my mask,

seen what it was and now I’ve seen

I want in again,

and I’m asking God for forgiveness

every day, three times I’m saying

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,

and the lights dim

and I think it’s OK,

I think God has forgiven me and I’m so grateful

I could weep tears, give thanks,

offer celebration,

but it’s only when the lights come back on that I realise

I’ve made a mistake,

God is implacable,

I’m not forgiven.

                And I can’t play any more.

*   *   *

THE FORECAST FROM GREECE IS GOOD

Try to keep them, poet,

those erotic visions of yours,

however few of them there are that can be stilled.

Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.

Try to hold them, poet,

when they come alive in your mind

at night or in the noonday brightness.

C. P. Cavafy, “When They Come Alive” in Collected Poems (1998), tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

When I arrived on the beach this afternoon,

three Greek beauties lay like levers,

their breasts – which were exposed to the sun –

turning from green to black

olives.

Small wonder that I was amazed

at the pair that lay bruised

of the one on her front,

at the other two lying marooned

on the feta bodies behind her.

Small wonder that I turned away,

scratched my thinning hair,

gave the human race the forecast:

“Looks set to continue.”

Those girls have gone now.

They popped on their dresses.

Pretty dresses, cotton dresses with flowers and the like.

The beach is almost empty now.

Just the waves lapping the shore.

Bursting with excitement.

Bubbling still.

The way they were yesterday.

The way they will be tomorrow.

We are here one day, gone the next.

We don’t realise it when we hit the shore.

That there’s another wave right behind us,

soon to fall.

The epitaph of a wave might read:

Was born at sea.

Crashed on such and such a beach.

Continues as a current.