POEMS
DORA MARKUS
I
( 1926)
It
was where a plank pier
pushed from Porto Corsini into the open sea;
a handful of men, dull as blocks, drop,
draw in their nets. With a toss
of your thumb, you point out the other shore,
invisible, your true country.
Then we trailed a canal to the outlying shipyards,
silvered with sun and soot-
a patch of town-sick country, where depressed spring,
full of amnesia, was burning out.
Here where the old world's way of surviving
is mottled by a nervous
Levantine anxiety,
your words flash a rainbow,
like the scales of a choking mullet.
Your agitation makes me think
of migratory birds diving at a lighthouse
on an ugly night-
even your ennui is a whirlwind,
circling invisibly-
its let-ups non-existent.
I don't know how, so pressed, you've stood up
to that puddle of diffidence, your heart.
What saves you, perhaps,
is a charm, which you keep
