(С ГРЕХОМ ПОПОЛАМ (15 ИЮНЯ 1925 ГОДА))
… and on past the bazaar. Headlong slither
down from Tartar hands
of flailing, glittering, wet, alive
merchandise –
fat fish that lay there choking
until a wiry Greek,
with an instant, glittering strike,
knifed open their guts.
The day warmed up – only just, firstly –
then started to scorch.
The white-panama leisure crowd filed
down to the beach.
In its own grease bubbled to doneness
the first cheburek;
grease gazed at with longing eyes
by the first-come chap.
And she sat there a long time, lonesome
in the doctor’s anteroom.
The hide on the sofa was cold,
but hers burned,
the lino gleaming, subtle-sharp the hurting,
then instant mist.
The doctor Jewish, Russian the nurse.
The crowd was Armenians,
Turks, photographers, Mrs-spiv mummies,
old queens, and layabouts.
Sunburn gleaming through buttonless
shirts and bleached pants.
Pushing and staring and finger-pointing,
pleading ‘Hold on, pleeze!
Hey, yong lady – so preetty,
so yong she ees!’
In unwilling gobs leaving memory – but still surely –
the heavy day inched
down into the black depths of the Black Sea,
making no splash.
Like cotton wool, the evening gloom mopped up,
moved off the mountainous shore,
then subtly the sunset blood seeped
into the Bosphorus,
and on to rapacious Jaffa, smoky Pireus,
and fatted Marseilles.
Glittering constellations and wet seas
whirled like a carousel.
Riding a round-backed dolphin billow to billow
by moon’s silver and grey,
into his conch there blew and blew
a phantom boy.