Through the town-making stones I step lightly.
Each thing in the market-place looks
Clear through me, not able to help it.
Squid lounging in death in their barrel
See me staring through life down among them.
They deepen the depth of their gaze.
The eyes of the dead hold me brightly.
I take all their looks into mine
And lift them up
Alive, and carry them out through the door
The Greeks made to give on the sea.
The world opens wide and turns blue.
My heart shines in me like sunlight.
I scramble up sill after sill,
Past windows where women are washing
My strange, heavy, foreigner’s clothes.
My voice in amazement dwindles
To that of a child,
And with it I call to my son,
Who reads Greek somewhere below me.
He answers; a dead tongue sings.
I leap to the bread-colored rampart,
And stroll there, sweating and staring
Down into the powder-blue ocean
With dozens of dead, round, all-seeing eyes
In my head, which have seen ships sink
Through this water
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