This is lovely Arthur. Real Lawrence Durrell territory. However a couple of 
minor points. First line of first haibun shoul we have "its"? Also, we start 
in Crete and by the last haibun we are in Colombia and I'm not sure howwe 
got there or whether we need to go there at all. Maybe the stat of a new 
series of haibun as I don't feel it belongs with this "Rock".



bw
James





>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: The Rock ( A haibun) Rewrite
>Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 08:46:44 -0000
>
>The Rock ( A haibun)
>
>         The road glitters in the Cretan sun, above it mirages quiver and
>shimmy. A path forks off  to dip through the gloomy underpass, from there 
>it
>trails through back ways towards Stavromenos of the white church and the
>dusty supermarket.
>
>Beyond the reach of bees
>a wilt of dying flowers.
>Hum of passing traffic.
>
>             I step from cool shade into the hammering sun to stand upon 
>the
>anvil of old roads, stopped by heaps of debris. Away from the main road the
>silence is intense,
>the air rich with the soil’s vapours.
>
>The church tower looms
>through a stand of tall pines.
>Ants debate bone or seed.
>
>            Men have left this heaped rubble, scooped from the earth to 
>leave
>a drain that guides winter storms and spring's swift melt seawards. The sun
>pins me in the dust that rises like smoke where I walk. The road  bends 
>then
>stops at the edge of the drain, a litter of rocks. I teeter a path where
>there is no path.
>
>White dust coats all;
>leg, arm and thistle leaf.
>Flicker of a passing swallow.
>
>   The shadow of an old woman, black as a beetle, turns at the corner of 
>her
>house and scuttles into the shade of lemon trees and vines. A tethered 
>goat,
>one horn shattered ragged, dances on small feet, bleats and butts at my
>intrusion into the lull of his day. Cicadas stir, call cave on my shadow
>from the dry grasses of the verge.
>This is not the time to be out. Locals sprawl and sweat in sleep or potter
>under lemon trees, closeted in shade or flutters of cool.
>I am a mad dog, loitering to savour the stink of old goat, listening to the
>choir in the grass, under a noonday sun.
>
>My eyes weep in the reek
>of smoking rubbish.
>The mountains bulk behind.
>
>             One rock in all that rock; a thin line of fracture. It is no
>bigger than my head and round as a fruit.  Its rough skin pocked by its
>descent down the centuries. I part it as I would a cut melon.
>           First light floods to illuminate dazzling striations, set there 
>by
>ancient silts, laid down by the run of lost rivers and the sift of 
>forgotten
>seas, brought here from a time before Minoan myth and legends of Santorini;
>sudden as  lightning, thrilling as untrodden snow.
>
>The goat’s bell chimes flat
>  as he shakes his beard.
>A fly tells beads of my  sweat
>
>
>            I view, from my Colombian mast, a new world of gold and purple
>lands, whorls of ochre and lilac, painted deserts and umber prairies, open
>like an unread book in my hands.
>
>Pale in the day sky
>the moon drops into the sea.
>A curtain flutters and falls back.


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