May 15-16th: Delphi

Published in the The Greek and Cypriot Notebook

May 15th: Delphi

The cold door, a candle
burning in the shrine
the way a snowflake
spins—

* * *
It had been a long drive to Delphi and we were still driving late into the night, and I was sitting by myself on the bus, looking down a valley of scrub between the road and the Corinthian Bay, wondering how archeologists knew where to dig for ancient Greek sites. From folk stories, I imagined, and oral histories. And literature. And a name appeared in my head, surprising me: “Like Plato.” And I thought, “No, that’s not right—not Plato—he didn’t write history.” And at that moment Layne stood up in the front of the bus and said, “Randy, have you read Plato: Neo-historian? It’s about how Plato was really writing a history of the previous 8000 years.”

May 16th: Approaching the Sacred Spring at Delphi
The years have devoured everything
without nostalgia. Below us, a pine forest
tumbles into a jumble of boulders,
nothing in the heather except a dog
and the slanting sun’s long shadows
across alpine flowers and stones
we choose not to notice as we
rush past to where we’re going,
nowhere really, desolate and derelict,
no longer a thing of beauty wild in its
embroidery, no longer ornate, or
transcendent, or even visible at all.