6 august 2007
Edward Lear, View of Kako
21 august 2007
Mrs Harmattan and Mrs Simoom
are sweeping the sands with a magical broom
Mrs Simoom and her sister Harmattan
are knitting the sea in a shimmering pattern
and like cunning Penelope, they by and by
fall asleep when they finish unweaving the sky.
28 august 2007
hills like white elephants
Edward Abbey would have been proud of me.
We were staying in a town, so were strangely insulated from the island. But at last I got out of the bus and walked between villages in search of a huge lost city (which I did indeed find some of), and this is what I heard and saw and smelt and ate:
goat bells; goats; small birds in bushes; swallows; martins; giant electric-blue bees; goldfinches; jackdaws; hundreds of honeybees on golden roadside thistles; butterflies: small blue, swallowtail, huge fritillaries; a soaring falcon; silence.
Wild figs and delicious tiny wild grapes; resin and herbs; camel thorns, and a Roman cistern full of cool clear water and tadpoles.
Mount Psiloritis, where Zeus is said to have spent his childhood.*
* The other, rival mountain where the other people tell you Zeus really spent his childhood was invisible and somewhere else.
- Hugo Williams