The Black and Marmara seas breed gypsy souls
Among the Turks. The brown and umber shoals
Of shade, beneath the parrot green or blue
Feathered waves, shivering to spew
Onto land with raucous breakers, flicker dark
And light like wrinkled, laughing eyes. The blades
Of sun in slashing arcs like Dervish swords
Go mad in colors that the nomad hordes
Had never dreamed in barren hills by Bor;
Here by Troy each man becomes a song
Of red and yellow like the single birds
Whistling in the open air as they soar
Toward the pines at Hissarlik where goatherds
meet at dusk, a dusty harlequin throng.
Izmir, 1962
From Patrick’s collection called poems.odt.
Patrick Meadows 1934 – 2017.