#1554 - some settled sunlight

 

1554

5.93

2.iv.24

some settled sunlight

ekphrastic for Ethel Carrick’s 1919 ‘A Market in Kaironan’

 

a summoning fate

won’t bring into focus

 

turban and turret

white washed walls

 

the headborne apple tea, bread, any ware

 

bolts of stuff piled

bargains too

 

windows for dark

 

the great trees touch

bright blue

 

you see the ceremony of the price

on desert streets

 

muezzin and minaret

just out of shot

 

hear this from dusk

well into night

 

donkey for christing through

another waits

 

far gate an echo

 

all motion arrested in this frame

 

but this in the abstract

as from a story told

 

they are mere market shapes

colours lit

 

baksheesh

 

you won’t understand

even one of these words

 

there’s not a face in this crowd