Ravi Shankar

And the promontory, sacrum, cliffs lashed by the waves,

land's end Europe, howling wind, arrhythmic nets

pulled in by fishermen sharing half a bottle of wine

between them, raindrops the size of olive pits plinking

the clay rooftops, mi amor, minarets of the monastery

an architectural oxymoron not based on any gentility

principle that can be parsed in storm, dolmens jutting

from clay, granite eggs crosshatched with scored letters

in an ancient language—druidic?—the dialogical quality

of history in conversation, the rhythm of faint lines due

in large part to the size of the cahiers, bowls of fish soup

and fado guitar overflowing the cobblestone, lurching

streetcars in parallel fifths, far from the Anglican belts

of hymnal, an irreducible secret, unspun wool, Moorish

palimpsest beneath erasures of Spaniards, Catholic dub

the anti-theatricality of the domestic arcane, presiding

over the gnarled cityscape the one and only begotten son,

whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, a middling

fish peeled from hook by handkerchief and from the boat's

bottom a checkerboard pattern palpitating like a heart,

the fishermen rowing back to shore, dragging with them

a wet heat in their wine-stained clothes, heavy with salt.

Surface Tension