I just wanted to say hello,
and to thank you for the good times
spent in your company without mentioning olive trees.
But there, I’ve done it.
Fallen straight into the holiday trap of making promises
that cannot be kept, of failed resolutions.
Olive trees, they’re bloody everywhere.
Filling the terraces that stretch down to the sea
from the garden in which I sit writing a poem
(that seems, against my will and better judgement,
to be about olive trees).
When the moon is full, their leathery, silver leaves
fall to the ground, curl up and become cicadas.
Their trunks so rough and gnarled
that lovers cannot carve their names into them.
Even Robert Graves, whose house overlooks
the terraces, forswore the knife for the pen.
But thank you Deya
for putting on a good show year after year.
Swimming down at the cala, music at Sa Fonda,
vino de casa, grilled squid and tumbet.
And there was something else… Something interesting…
But it’s too hot to think,
sitting here in the garden looking at an olive tree
that has become a poem about an olive tree
that looks like another poem, and yet another,
filling the pages that stretch down to the sea.