The Aegean sea stretched for miles and miles round pearly white sands, iridescent, prismatic. One could bore their stringent eyes into its phantasm and vouch they could witness phantoms of immediate warfare etched onto the Grecian sands, fought on land or on alien soils where spoils of war pleaded for mercy which never arrived.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The island of Delos remained solitary, almost lonely in the late afternoon sun. White sand rose sometimes into Doric columns, some broken, some remnants, and some almost obsolete : marble encased under the shimmering rays of the sun. I had spent a week in Greece and two decades in this world and nothing seemed parallel to the immediacy of spontaneous wonder that Delos could evoke. The Aegean gladly kissed the quivering ashen shore, as swift footed winds raise strands of lovely locks only to brush with gentle healing the qualms of a fevered brow, until they blush again.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nothing seemed to quieten the long silenced island, the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo. The olive groves rustled acoustics known to nature and Dionysian revellers alone, shadows of trees with their backs pressed to the sun – multitudes of silhouettes too eager to bare their hearts, too eager to bare their fangs.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The marble ruins where I stood had been ignored by inhabitants and tourists alike. Here stands no Acropolis, here rules no Parthenon with silver robes of sunken glory. Crumbling walls stand like heralds that ask for granted allowance, smirk of a thousand maenads plastered on a singular youthful face. They ask for nothing, but stories to tell. “Do not listen too deeply”, an old woman at Mykonos used to say, “or they will know”.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I did not fancy letting them know.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Decrepit designs lined the floors and half broken ceiling, that might have once breathed in incense fumes raised to the gods as libation. Greek meanders : squarish, untamed, endless patterns, geometric – senile cryptids that cannot and will not make allowances for fragile, mortal lives. Perhaps that is the reason why the Greek Meander art were chosen – to show the despair of the divine. Human despair often falls shy of correspondence when greater misery is chanced upon. A marble statue stood listlessly, fierceness in it’s stone cold eyes, as if the sands of time had sucked off it’s pupils and there it still stands, stone loins gently waving over every muscle and sinew, gently, gently, gently. It’s unshorn hair, like seashells clubbed together, enmeshed, one over the other, tumbling, falling, coiling like pallid ammonite washed over by vinsanto. His hands, those fingers might well have played lyres and harps, reedlike in their daintiness. “Do not play among the reeds,” an old woman in Argos used to say, “they will see you”.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now I know why.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It had to be the altar, I thought. No one but a deity could command such soft eloquence on unyielding stone, the way his thumb bent towards the chord, the way his forefinger stretched for the touch of a string quite far from the thumb, like a restless sailor who had just glanced over the horizon and found a fleeting glimpse of his homeland. The air sparked with the anger of an ancient god, and this had to be him. How quickly a thing changes to a being, I thought, smiled, half concealed in his lovely tresses. For who could set her eyes remorselessly on such a sculpture so sanctified and not play a Pygmalion or a Hadrian at it? Standing on a marble floor infused with waves of Aegean wilderness and sunset of aged amarone, the god’s beauty was breathtaking.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They used to offer libations and sacrifice – fragrant oils that drizzled down the earthen bowl which housed a waxed wick due to be burnt for prayers and prophecies. They used to offer flowers and well beloved leaves – laurels and olives and sunflowers and hyacinths and geraniums, roses and carnations, woven with music, smelling of divine ambrosia of ivory towered Olympus, smelling of drops of blood of some ancient seamstress, momentarily distrait, smelling of home.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I offered a sonnet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Slipped a little human palm into the tenderness of stone cold marble fingers, reading out, lips quivering as if of hemlock I had drunk.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How I wish these steps had brought me close<\/span> The hand fell from my grasp. Trembling. Trembling. Bleeding.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Somoshree Palit The Aegean sea stretched for miles and miles round pearly white sands, iridescent, prismatic. One could bore their stringent eyes into its phantasm and vouch they could witness phantoms of immediate warfare etched onto the Grecian sands, fought on land or on alien soils where spoils of war pleaded for mercy which never Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"parent":23,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-245","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245\/revisions\/448"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span>To the figure upon this marble floor<\/span>
\n<\/span>That daunting stands, as if in sweet repose;<\/span>
\n<\/span>With wearied, starless eyes upon some lore<\/span>
\n<\/span>Some ancient Delian had sung someday :<\/span>
\n<\/span>When’er she the halls of Hellas would roam<\/span>
\n<\/span>Would she have known how gods would lose their way?<\/span>
\n<\/span>Do ancient marble sinews yearn for home?<\/span>
\n<\/span>“Bon Voyage”, they said when I left my lands<\/span>
\n<\/span>And plunged into the Aegean sea.<\/span>
\n<\/span>They wait. In marble crude they cannot weep<\/span>
\n<\/span>Their timeless decadent eternity.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Tell him Delos, were he a Christian god,<\/span>
\n<\/span>I’d love him with a Heathen ferocity.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n