GEORGE SEFERIS 'S TIME
March 13, 1900

The island
of the Aegean
and a singer and poet
chants of exiles
of banishment
your hands
have a brotherly shape
in a personal charge
of amnesty denied
toward poets
with skeptical pens
writing on the beach
scratching the paper
of the seaweed hand
a prompter of notes
by a warm night's
gamble of words
in the lamplight
shading your fingers
printed on mirrors
of sultry mirages
in grey fog descriptions
of the last tourist ship
onto the harbor's cul-de-sac
heading to the downpour
at the ports
of holding you up
of your last breathless
possible moment.